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OTJIDA’S WORKS 


A Village Commune . 
Moths . 

Friendship . 

Ariadne . 

Sign a 

In a Winter City . 
Granville de Vigne . 
Strathmore 
Chandos . 

Idalia .... 
«Under Two Flags 
Tricotrin 

Puck 

Folle-Farine . 

Pascarel . 

B£b£e .... 
Cecil Castlemaine’s Gage . 
Randolph Gordon . 
Beatrice Boville 
A Leaf in the Storm (8vo) 


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These Novels are universally acknowledged to be the most 
powerful and fascinating works of fiction which the present, 
century, so prolific in light reading, has produced. 

The above are handsomely and uniformly bound in cloth, 
12mo form, and in neat paper covers, and are for sale by 
booksellers generally, or will be sent by mail, postage paid, on 
receipt of price by 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO., Publishers, 

715 and 717 Market St., Philadelphia. 



TWO 



FLAGS 


A. NOVEL. 



BY 




> 


AUTHOR OF 






PHILADELPHIA! 

J. B. LI PP INCOT T & CO. 

1881 . 




} 

> » 
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> > » 
> 


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“OTJIDA,” 

“ID ALIA,” “RANDOLPH GORDON,” “ STRATHMOIUS,” 
“CECIL CASTLEMAINE’S GAGE,” ETC. ETC. 







h 


AVIS AU LECTEUR. 


This Story was originally written for a military periodi- 
cal. It has been fortunate enough to receive much com- 
mendation from military men, and for them it is now 
specially issued in its present form. For the general 
public it may be as well to add that, where translations 
are appended to the French phrases, those translations 
usually follow the idiomatic and particular meaning at- 
tached to those expressions in the argot of the Army of 
Algeria, and not the correct or literal one given to such 
words or sentences in ordinary grammatical parlance. 


OUIDA. 


CONTENTS 


Chapter I. — “Beauty of the Brigades.” 5 

II. — The Loose Box, and the Tabagie 19 

III.— The Soldier’s Blue Ribbon 31 

IY. — Love a la Mode 63 

Y. — Under the Keeper’s Tree 67 

VI. — The End of a Ringing Run r.. 77 

VII. — After a Richmond Dinner 88 

VIII. — A Stag Hunt au Clair de la Lune 110 

IX.— The Painted Bit >. 124 

X. — “Petite Reine.” 136 

XI. — For a Woman’s Sake ; 166 

XII. — The King’s last Service 177 

XIII. — In the Caf6 of the Chasseurs 200 

XIV. — “De Profundis” before “plunging.” 209 

XV. — “L’Amie du Drapeau.” 217 

XVI. — Cigarette en Bacchante 237 

XVII. — Under the Houses of Hair 254 

XVIII. — Cigarette en Bienfaitrice 278 

XIX. — The Ivory Squadrons 300 

XX. — Cigarette en Conseil et Cachette 310 


(iii) 


CONTENTS. 


It 

PAG I 

Chapter XXI. — Cigarette en Condottiera 335 

XXII. — The Mistress of the White King 348 

XXIII. — The Little Leopard of France. 370 

XXIV. — “Miladi aux Beaux Yeux Bleus.” 395 

XXV. — “Le Bon Zig.” 414 

XXVI.— Zaraila 428 

XXVII. — The Love of the Amazon 442 

XXVIII.— The Leathern Zackrist 458 

XXIX. — By the Bivouac Fire 469 

XXX. — Seul au Monde 490 

XXXI. — “ Je vous achfcte votre Vie.” 511 

XXXII.— “Venetia.” 522 

XXXIII.— The Gift of the Cross 549 

XXXIV. — The Desert Hawk and the Paradise-bird 567 

XXXV.— Ordeal by Fire 586 

XXXVI. — The Vengeance of the Little One... 608 

XXXVII. — In the midst of her Army 637 

THE LAST.— At Rest 650 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER I. 

“BEAUTY OP THE BRIGADES.” 

“ I don’t say but what he’s difficult to please with his 
Tops,” said Mr. Rake, factotum to the Hon. Bertie Cecil, 
of the 1st Life Guards, with that article of hunting tog- 
gery suspended in his right hand as he paused, before 
going up stairs, to deliver his opinions with characteristic 
weight and vivacity to the stud-groom, “he is uncommon 
particular about ’em ; and if his leathers ain’t as white as 
snow he’ll never touch ’em, tho’ as soon as the pack come 
nigh him at Royallieu, the leathers might just as well 
never have been cleaned, them hounds jump about him so; 
old Champion’s at his saddle before you can say Davy 
Jones. Tops are trials, I ain’t denying that, specially 
when you’ve jacks, and moccasins, and moor boots, and 
Russia-leather crickets, and turf hacks, and Hythe boots, 
and waterproofs, and all manner of varnish things for 
dress, that none of the boys will do right unless you look 
after ’em yourself. But is it likely that he should know 
what a worry a Top’s complexion is, and how hard it is to 
come right with all the Fast Brown polishing in the world ? 
how should he guess what a piece of work it is to get ’em 
all of a color, and how like they are to come mottled, and 
how a’most sure they’ll ten to one go off dark just as they’re 
growing yellow, and put you to shame, let you do what 
you will to make ’em cut a shine over the country ? How 
should he know ? 1 don’t complain of that; bless you he 

1 * ( 5 ) 


6 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


never thinks. It’s * do this, Rake/ ‘ do that/ arid he never 
remember ’t isn’t done by magic. But lie’s a true gentle- 
man, Mr. Cecil; never grudge a guinea, or a fiver to you; 
never out of temper neither, always have a kind word for 
you if you want, thoro’bred every inch’ of him ; see him 
bring down a rocketter, or lift his horse over the Broad 
Water I He’s a gentleman — not like your snobs that have 
nothing sound about ’em but their cash, and swept out 
their shops before they bought their fine feathers 1 — and 
I’ll be d — d if I care what I do for him.” 

With which peroration to his born-enemy the stud-groom, 
with whom he waged a perpetual and most lively feud, 
Rake flourished the tops that had been under discussion, 
and triumphant, as he invariably was, ran up the back 
stairs of his master’s lodgings in Piccadilly, opposite the 
Green Park, and with a rap on the panels entered his mas- 
ter’s bed-room. 

A Guardsman at home is always, if anything, rather 
more luxuriously accommodated than a young Duchess, 
and Bertie Cecil was never behind his fellows in anything; 
besides, he was one of the cracks of the Household, and 
women sent him pretty things enough to fill the Palais 
Royal. The dressing-table was littered with Bohemian 
glass and gold-stoppered bottles, and all the perfumes of 
Araby represented by Breidenback and Rimmel. The 
dressing-case was of silver, with the name studded on the 
lid in turquoises; the brushes, boot-jacks, boot-trees, whip- 
stands, were of ivory and tortoiseshell ; a couple of tiger 
skins were on the hearth with a retriever and blue grey- 
hound in possession ; above the mantle-piece were crossed 
swords in all the varieties of gilt, gold, silver, ivory, alu- 
minum, chiseled and embossed hilts ; and on the walls were 
a few perfect French pictures, with the portraits of a grey- 
hound drawn by Landseer, of a steeple-chaser by Harry 
Hall, one or two of Herring’s hunters, and two or three 
fair women in crayons. The hangings of the room were 
silken and rose-colored, and a delicious confusion pre- 
vailed through it pell-mell, box-spurs, hunting-stirrups, 
cartridge-cases, curb-chains, muzzle-loaders, hunting-flasks, 
and white gauntlets, being mixed up with Paris novels, 
pink notes, point-lace ties, bracelets, and bouquets to be 


ft BEAUTY OP THE BRIGADES.” t 

dispatched to various destinations, and velvet and silk 
bags for bank-notes, cigars, or vesuvians, embroidered by 
feminine fingers and as useless as those pretty fingers them- 
selves On the softest of sofas, half dressed, and having 
half an hour before splashed like a water dog out of the 
bath, as big as a small pond, in the dressing-chamber be- 
yond, was the lion. Bertie himself, second son of Viscount 
Rovallieu, known generally in the Brigades as “Beauty.” 
The appellative, gained at Eton, was in no way unde- 
served ; when the smoke cleared away that was circling 
round him out of a great meerschaum-bowl, it showed a 
face of as much delicacy and brilliancy as a woman’s, hand- 
some, thoro’bred, languid, nonchalant, with a certain latent 
recklessness under the impassive calm of habit, and a sin- 
gular softness given to the large, dark hazel eyes by the 
unusual length of the lashes over them. His features were 
exceedingly fair, fair as the fairest girl’s ; his hair was of the 
softest, silkiest, brightest chestnut; his mouth very beau- 
tifully shaped ; on the whole, with a certain gentle, mournful 
love-me look that his eyes had with them, it was no wonder 
that great ladies and gay lionnes alike gave him the palm 
as the handsomest man in all the Household Regiments — 
not even excepting that splendid golden-haired Colossus, his 
oldest friend and closest comrade, known as “ the Seraph.” 

He looked at the new tops that Rake swung in his hand, 
and shook his head. 

“ Better, Rake ; but not right yet. Can't you get that 
tawny color in the tiger’s skin there ? You go so much 
to brown.” 

Rake shook his head in turn, as he set down the incor- 
rigible tops beside six pairs of their fellows, and six times 
six of every other sort of boots that the covert side 9 the 
heather, the flat, or the “ sweet shady side of Pall Mull ” 
ever knew. 

“ Do my best, sir ; but Polish don’t come nigh Nature, 
Mr Cecil.” 

“ Goes beyond it, the ladies say ; and to do them justice 
they favor it much the most,” laughed Cecil to himself, 
floating fresh clouds of Turkish about him. “ Willon up P 

“ Yes, sir. Come in this minute for orders.” 

“ How’d Forest King stand the train ?” 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Bright as a bird, sir ; he Lever mind nothing. Mother 
o’ Pearl she worretted a little, he says; she always do, 
aloug of the engine noise ; but the King walked in and 
out just as if the stations were his own stable-yard.” 

“He gave them gruel and chilled water after the shak- 
ing before he let them go to their corn ?” 

“ He says he did, sir.” 

Bake would by no means take upon himself to warrant 
the veracity of his sworn foe, the stud-groom ; unremit- 
ting feud was between them; Rake considered that he 
knew more about horses than any other man living, and 
the other functionary proportionately resented back his 
knowledge and his interference, as utterly out of place in 
a body-servant. 

“ Tell him I’ll look in at the stable after duty and see 
the screws are all right ; and that he’s to be ready to go 
down with them by my train to-morrow — noon, you know. 
Send that note there, and the bracelets, to St. John’s 
Wood : and that white bouquet to Mrs. Delamaine. Bid 
Willon get some Banbury bits; I prefer the revolving 
mouths, and some of Wood’s double mouths and Nelson 
gags ; we want new ones. Mind that lever-snap breech- 
loader comes home in time. Look in at the Commission 
stables, and if you see a likely black charger as good as 
Black Douglas, tell me. Write about the stud fox-terrier, 
and buy the blue Dandy Dinmont; Lady G&*kevere wants 
him. I’ll take him down with me. But first put me into 
harness, Rake ; it's getting late.” 

Murmuring which multiplicity of directions, for Rake to 
catch as he could, in the softest and sleepiest of tones, 
Bertie Cecil drank a glass of Cura 9 oa, put his tail, lithe 
limbs indolently off his sofa, and surrendered him-self to 
the martyrdom of cuirass and gorget, standing six feet one 
without his spurred jacks, but light-built and full of grace 
as a deer, or his weight would not have been what it was 
in gentleman-rider races from the Hunt steeple-chase at La 
Marche to the Grand National in the Shires. 

“As if Parliament couldn’t meet without dragging us 
through the dust 1 The idiots write about ‘ the swells in 
the Guards,’ as if we had all fun and no work, and knew 
uothing of the rough of the Service. I should like to 


“beauty op the brigades.” 3 

learn what they call sitting motionless in your saddle 
through half a day, while a London mob goes mad round 
you, and lost dogs snap at your charger’s nose, and dirty 
little beggars squeeze against your legs, and the sun broils 
you, or the fog soaks you, and you sit sentinel over a gin- 
ger-bread coach till you’re deaf with the noise, and blind 
with the dust, and sick with the crowd, and half dead for 
want of sodas and brandies, and from going a whole morn- 
ing without one cigarette I not to mention the inevitable 
apple-woman who invariably entangles herself between 
your horse’s legs, and the certainty of your riding down 
somebody and having a summons about it the next day l 
If all that isn’t the rough of the Service, I should like to 
know what is. Why, the hottest day in the batteries, or 
the sharpest rush into Ghoorkahs or Bhoteahs, would be 
light work compared I” murmured Cecil with the most 
plaintive pity for the hardships of life in the Household, 
while Bake, with the rapid proficiency of long habit, 
braced and buckled and buttoned, knotted the sash with 
the knack of professional genius, girt on the brightest of 
all glittering polished silver steel “ Cut-and-Thrusts,” with 
its rich gilt mountings, and contemplated with flattering 
self-complacency leathers white as snow, jacks brilliant as 
black varnish could make them, and silver spurs of glit- 
tering radiance, until his master stood full harnessed, at 
length, as gallant a Life Guardsman as ever did duty at the 
Palace by making love to the handsomest lady-in-waiting. 

“To sit wedged in with one’s troop for five hours, and 
in a drizzle too 1 Houses oughtn’t to meet until the day’s 
fine ; I’m sure they are in no hurry,” said Cecil to himself, 
as he pocketed a dainty, filmy handkerchief, all perfume, 
point, and embroidery, with the interlaced B. C., and the 
crest on the corner, while he looked hopelessly out of the 
window. He was perfectly happy, drenched to the skin 
on the moors after a royal, or in a fast thing with the Mel- 
ton men from Thorpe Trussels to Ranksborough ; but 
three drops of rain when on duty were a totally different 
matter, to be resented with any amount of dandy’s lamenta- 
tions, and epicurean diatribes. 

“Ah, young one, how. are you ? Is the day very bad?” 
he asked with languid wistfulness as the door opened. 


10 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


But indifferent and weary — on account of the weather — . 
as the tone was, his eyes rested with a kindly, cordial light 
on the new-comer, a young fellow of scarcely twenty, like 
himself in feature, though much smaller and slighter in 
build, a graceful boy enough, with no fault in his face, ex- 
cept a certain weakness in the mouth, just shadowed only, 
as yet, with down. 

A celebrity, the Zu-Zu, the last coryphee whom Bertie 
had translated from a sphere of garret bread-and-cheese to 
a sphere of villa champagne and chicken (and who, of 
course, in proportion to the previous scarcity of her bread- 
and-cheese grew immediately intolerant of any wine less 
than 90s. the dozen), said that Cecil cared for nothing 
longer than a fortnight, unless it were his horse, Forest * 
King. It was very ungrateful in the Zu-Zu, since he cared 
for her at the least a whole quarter, paying for his fidelity 
at the tone of a hundred a month ; and, also, it was not 
true, for besides Forest King, he loved his young brother 
Berkeley : — which however she neither knew nor guessed. 

‘‘Beastly!” replied that young gentleman, in reference 
to the weather, which was indeed pretty tolerable for an 
English morning in February. “ I say, Bertie — are you 
in a hurry ?” 

“ The very deuce of a hurry, little one : why?” Bertie 
never was in a hurry, however, and he said this as lazily as 
possible, shaking the white horsehair over his helmet, and 
drawing in deep draughts of Turkish Latakia previous to 
parting with his pipe for the whole of four or five hours. 

“Because I am in a hole — no end of a hole — and I 
thought you’d help me,” murmured the boy, half penitently, 
half caressingly; he was very girlish in his face and his 
ways. On which confession, Bake retired into the bath- 
room ; he could hear just as well there, and a sense of de- 
corum made him withdraw, though his presence would 
have been wholly forgotten by them. In something the 
same spirit as the French countess accounted for her em- 
ploying her valet to bring her her chocolate in bed — “Est 
ce que vous appelez cette chose-ld un homme ?”• — Bertie 
had on occasion, so wholly regarded servants as necessary 
furniture, that he had gone through a love scene, with that 
handsome coquette Lady Regalia, totally oblivious of the 


u BEAUTY OF THE BRIGADES.” 11 

presence of the groom of the chambers, and the possibility 
of that person’s appearance in the witness-box of the Di- 
vorce Court. It was in no way his passion that blinded 
him — he did not put the steam on like that, and never went 
in for any disturbing emotion, — it was simply habit, and 
forgetfulness that those functionaries were not born mute, 
deaf, and sightless. 

He tossed some essence over his hands, and drew on his 
gauntlets. 

“ What’s up, Berk ?” 

The boy hung his head, and played a little uneasily with 
an ormolu terrier-pot, upsetting half the tobacco in it; he 
was trained to his brother’s nonchalant impenetrable school, 
and used to his brother’s set, a cool, listless, reckless, 
thoro’bred, and impassive set, whose first canon was that 
you must lose your last thousand in the world without 
giving a sign that you winced, and must win half a million 
without showing that you were gratified; but he had some- 
thing of girlish weakness in his nature, and a reserve in 
his temperament that was with difficulty conquered. 

Bertie looked at him, and laid -liis hand gently on the 
young one’s shoulder. 

“Come, my boy, out with it! It’s nothing very bad I’ll 
be bound ?” 

“ I want some more money ; a couple of ponies,” said 
the boy a little huskily; he did not meet his brother’s eyes 
that were looking straight down on him. 

Cecil gave a long low whistle, and drew a meditative 
whiff from his meerschaum. 

“ Tres cher, you’re always wanting money. So am I. 
So is everybody. The normal state of man is to want 
money. Two ponies. What’s it for ?” 

“ I lost it at chicken-hazard last night. Poulteney lent 
it me, and I told him I would send it him in the morning. 
The ponies were gone before I thought of it, Bertie, and I 
haven’t a notion where to get them to pay him again.” 

“ Heavy stakes, young one, for you” murmured Cecil, 
while his hand dropped from the boy’s shoulder, and a 
shadow of gravity passed over his face ; money was very 
scarce with himself. Berkeley gave him a hurried appeal- 
ing glance. He was used to shift all his anxieties on to 


12 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


his elder brother, and to be helped by him under any diffi- 
culty. Cecil never allotted two seconds’ thought to his 
own embarrassments, but he would multiply them tenfold 
by taking other people’s on him as well with an unremit- 
ting and thoughtless good nature. 

“ I couldn’t help it,” pleaded the lad with coaxing and 
almost piteous apology. “ I backed Grosvenor’s play, 
and you know he’s always the most wonderful luck in the 
world. I couldn’t tell he’d go a crowner and have such 
cards as he had. How shall I get the money, Bertie ? I 
daren’t ask the governor; and besides I told Poulteney he 
should have it this morning. What do you think if I sold 
the mare ? But then I couldn’t sell her in a minute ” 

Cecil laughed a little, but his eyes as they rested on the 
lad’s young, fair, womanish face were very gentle under the 
long shade of their lashes. 

“ Sell the mare ! Nonsense ! How should anybody live 
without a hack ? I can pull you through, I dare say. 
Ah 1 by George, there’s the quarters chiming. I shall be 
too late, as I live.” 

Not hurried still, however, even by that near prospect, 
he sauntered to his dressing-table, took up one of the 
pretty velvet and gold-filigreed absurdities, and shook out 
all the bank notes there were in it. There were fives and 
tens enough to count up 45Z. He reached over and caught 
up a five from a little heap lying loose on a novel of Du 
Terrail’s, and tossed the whole across the room to the boy. 

“There you are, young one! But don’t borrow of any 
but your own people again, Be^k. We don’t do that. No, 
no ! — no thanks. Shut up all that. If ever you get in a 
hole, I’ll take you out if I can. Good-by — will you go to 
the Lords? Better not, — nothing to see, and still less to 
hear. All stale. That’s the only comfort for us, — we are 
outside !” he said, witli something that almost approached 
hurry in the utterance, so great was his terror of anything 
approaching a scene, and so eager was he to escape his 
brother’s gratitude. The boy had taken the notes with 
delighted thanks indeed, but with that tranquil and unpro- 
testing readiness with which spoiled childishness or un- 
hesitating selfishness, accepts gifts and sacrifices from an- 
other’s generosity, which have been so general that they 


13 


“BEAUTY of the BRIGADES.” 

have ceased to have magnitude. As his brother passed 
him, however, he caught his hand a second, and looked up 
with a mist before his eyes? and a flush half of shame, half 
of gratitude, on his face. 

“What a trump you are I — how good you are, Bertie I” 

Cecil laughed and shrugged his shoulders. 

“ First time I ever heard it, my dear boy,” he answered, 
as he lounged down the staircase, his chains clashing and 
jingling, while pressing his helmet on to his forehead and 
pulling the chin scale over his moustaches, he sauntered 
out into the street where his charger was waiting. 

“ The deuce 1” he thought, as he settled himself in his 
stirrups, while the raw morning wind tossed his white 
plume hither and thither. “ I never remembered ! — I 
don’t believe I’ve left myself money enough to take Willon 
and Rake and the cattle down to the Shires to-morrow. 
If I shouldn’t have kept enough to take my own ticket 
with ! — that would be no end of a sell. On my word I 
don’t know how much there’s left on the dressing-table. 
Well ! I can’t help it ; Poulteney had to be paid ; I can’t 
have Berk’s name show in anything that looks shady.” 

The 50 l. had been the last remnant of a bill, done under 
great difficulties with a sagacious Jew, and Cecil had no 
more certainty of possessing any more money until next 
pay-day should come round than he had of possessing the 
moon ; lack of ready money, moreover, is a serious incon- 
venience when you belong to clubs where “pounds and 
fives ” are the lowest points, and live with men who take 
the odds on most events in thousands ; but the thing was 
done ; he would not have undone it at the boy’s loss if he 
could; and Cecil, who never was worried by the loss of 
the most stupendous “crusher,” and who made it a rule 
never to think of disagreeable inevitabilities two minutes 
together, shook his charger’s bridle and cantered down 
Piccadilly toward the barracks, while Black Douglas 
reared, curveted, made as if he would kick, and finally 
ended by “ passaging ” down half the length of the road, 
to the prominent peril of all passers-by, and looking emi- 
nently glossy, handsome, stalwart, and foam-flecked, while 
he thus expressed his disapprobation of forming part of 
the escort from Palace to Parliament. 


14 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Home Secretary should see about it ; it’s abominable J 
If we must come among them, they ought to be made a 
little odoriferous first. A couple of fire-engines now, 
playing on them continuously with rose-water and bouquet 
d’Ess, for an hour before we come up, might do a little 
good. I’ll get some men to speak about it in the house ; 
call it ‘Bill for the Purifying of the Unwashed, and Pre- 
vention of their Suffocating Her Majesty’s Brigades,’” 
murmured Cecil to the Earl of Broceliande, next him, 
as they sat down in their saddles with the rest of the 
“ First Life,” in front of St. Stephen’s, with a hazy fog 
steaming round them, and a London mob crushing against 
their chargers’ flanks, while Black Douglas stood like a 
rock, though a butcher’s tray was pressed against his 
withers, a mongrel was snapping at his hocks, and the in- 
evitable apple-woman, of Cecil’s prophetic horror, was 
wildly plunging between his legs, as the hydra-headed 
rushed down in insane headlong haste to stare at, and 
crush on to, that superb body of Guards. 

“ I would give a kingdom fora soda and brandy. Bah! 
ye gods ! what a smell of fish and fustian,” sighed Bertie, 
with a yawn of utter famine for want of something to 
drink and something to smoke, were it only a glass of 
brown sherry and a little papelito, while he glanced down 
at the snow-white and jet-black master-pieces of Hake’s 
genius, all smirched, and splashed, and smeared. 

He had given fifty pounds away, and scarcely knew 
whether he should have enough to take his ticket next 
day into the Shires, and he owed fifty hundred without 
having the slightest grounds for supposing he should ever 
be able to pay it, and he cared no more about either of 
these things than he cared about the Zu-Zu’s throwing the 
half-guinea peaches into the river after a Hichmond din- 
ner, in the effort to hit dragon-flies with them ; but to be 
half a day without a cigarette, and to have a disagreeable 
odor of apples and corduroys wafted up to him, was a 
calamity that made him insupportably depressed and un- 
happy. 

Well, why not? It is the trifles of life that are its 
bores after all. Most men can meet ruin calmly, for in- 
stance, or laugh when they lie in a ditch with their own 


15 


“ BEAUTY OP THE BRIGADES.” 

knee-joint and their hunter’s spine broken over the double 
post and rails : it is the mud that has choked up your horn 
just when you wanted to rally the pack ; it’s the county 
member who catches you by the button in the lobby ; it's 
the whip who carries you off to a division just when you’ve 
sat down to your turbot ; it’s the ten seconds by which you 
miss the train ; it’s the dust that gets in your eyes as you 
go down to Epsom ; it’s the pretty little rose note that 
went by accident to your house instead of your club, and 
raised a storm from Madame ; it’s the dog that always 
will run wild into the birds ; it’s the cook who always will 
season the white soup wrong, — it is these that are the bores 
of life, and that try the temper of your philosophy. 

An acquaintance of mine told me the other day of hav- 
ing lost heavy sums through a swindler, with as placid an 
indifference as if he had lost a toothpick ; but he swore 
like a trooper because a thief had stolen the steel-mounted 
hoof of a dead pet hunter. 

“ Insufferable 1” murmured Cecil, hiding another yawn 
behind his gauntlet; *‘the Line’s nothing half so bad as 
this ; one clay in a London mob beats a year’s campaign- 
ing ; what’s charging a pah to charging an oyster-stall, or 
a parapet of fascines to a bristling row of umbrellas ?” 

Which question as to the relative hardships of the two 
Arms was a question of military interest never answered, 
as Cecil scattered the umbrellas right and left, and dashed 
from the Houses of Parliament full trot with the rest of 
the escort on the return to the Palace, the afternoon sun 
breaking out with a brightened gleam from the clouds, and 
flashing off the drawn swords, the streaming plumes, the 
glittering breastplates, the gold embroideries, and the fret- 
ting chargers. 

But a mere sun-gleam just when the thing was over, 
and the escort was pacing back to Hyde Park barracks, 
could not console Cecil for fog, wind, mud, oyster-vendors, 
bad odors, and the uproar and riff-raff of the streets : 
specially when his throat was as dry as a lime-kiln, and 
his longing for the sight of a cheroot approaching despe- 
ration. Unlimited sodas, three pipes smoked silently over 
Delphine Demirep’s last novel, a bath well dashed with 
eau de cologne, and some glasses of Anisette after the 




16 


UNDER TWO FLAGS, 


fatigue-duty of unharnessing, restored him a little; but 
he was still weary and depressed into gentler languor than 
ever through all the courses at a dinner party at the Aus- 
trian Embassy, and did not recover his dejection at a re- 
ception of the Duchess of Lydiard-Tregoze, where the 
prettiest French Countess of her time asked him if any- 
thing was the matter. 

“ Yes 1” said Bertie with a sigh, and a profound melan- 
choly in what the woman called his handsome Spanish 
eyes, “ I have had a great misfortune ; we have been on 
duty all day 1” 

He did not thoroughly recover tone, light and careless 
though his temper was, till the Zu-Zu, in her diamond- 
edition of a villa, prescribed Creme de Bouzy and Parfait 
Amour in succession, with a considerable amount of pine- 
apple ice at three o’clock in the morning, which restora- 
tive prescription succeeded. 

Indeed, it took something as tremendous as divorce 
from all forms of smoking for five hours, to make an im- 
pression on Bertie. He had the most serene insouciance 
that ever a man was blessed with; in worry lie did not be- 
lieve — he never let it come near him ; and beyond a little 
difficulty sometimes in separating too many entangled 
rose-chains caught round him at the same time, and the 
annoyance of a miscalculation on the fiat, or the ridge- 
and-furrow, when a Maldon or Danebury favorite came 
nowhere, or his book was wrong for the Grand National, 
Cecil had no cares of any sort or description. 

True, the Royallieu Peerage, one of the most ancient 
and almost one of the most impoverished in the kingdom, 
could ill afford to maintain its sons in the expensive career 
on which it had launched them, and the chief there was to 
spare usually went between the eldest son, a Secretary of 
Legation in that costly and charming City of Vienna, and 
to the young one, Berkeley, through the old Viscount’s 
partiality, so that, had Bertie ever gone so far as to study 
his actual position, he would have probably confessed that 
it was, to say the least, awkward ; but then he never did 
this, certainly Lever did it thoroughly. Sometimes he felt 
himself near the wind when settling-day came, or the Jews 
appeared utterly impracticable ; but as a rule, things had 


17 


“beauty of the BRIGADES.” 

a.ways trimmecf somehow , and though his debts were con- 
siderable, and he was literally as penniless as a man can 
be to stay in the Guards at all, he had never in any shape 
realized the want of money. He might not be able to 
raise a guinea to go toward that long-standing account, 
his army tailor’s bill, and post obits had long ago fore- 
stalled' the few hundred a year that, under his mother’s 
settlements, would come to him at the Viscount’s death ; 
but Cecil had never known in his life what it was not to 
have a first-rate stud, not to live as luxuriously as a duke, 
not to order the costliest dinners at the clubs, and be 
among the first to lead all the splendid entertainments 
and extravagancies of the household ; he had never been 
without his Highland shooting, his Baden gaming, his 
prize-winning schooner among the R. V. Y. Squadron, 
his September battues, hi% Pytchley hunting, his pretty 
expensive Zu-Zus and other toys, his drag for Epsom and 
his trap and hack for the Park, his crowd of engagements 
through the season, and his bevy of fair leaders of the 
fashion to smile on him, and shower their invitation-cards 
on him, like a rain of rose-leaves, as one of their “ best 
men.” 

“Best,” that is, in the sense of fashion, flirting, waltz- 
ing, and general social distinction ; in no other seuse, for 
the newest of debutantes knew well that “Beauty,” though 
the most perfect of flirts, would never be “ serious,” and 
had nothing to be serious with, on which understanding 
he was allowed by the sex to have the run of their bou- 
doirs and drawing-rooms, much as if he were a little lion- 
dog; they counted him quite “safe he made love to the 
married women, to be sure, but he was quite certain not to 
run away with the marriageable daughters. 

Hence, Bertie had never felt the want of all that is 
bought by and represents money, and imbibed a vague, in- 
distinct impression that all these things that made life 
pleasant came by Nature, and were the natural inheritance 
and concomitants of anybody born in a decent station, and 
endowed with a tolerable tact; such a matter-of-fact diffi- 
culty as not having gold enough to pay for his own and 
his stud’s transit to the Shires had very rarely stared him 
Ln the face, and whea it did he trusted to chance to lift 
B 2 * 


18 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


him safely over such a social “ yawner, ”-and rarely trusted 
in vain. 

According- to all the canons of his Order he was never 
excited, never disappointed, never exhilarated, never dis- 
turbed, and also of course never by any chance embar- 
rassed. “ Voire imperturbabilite” as the Prince de Ligne 
used to designate La Grande Catherine, would have been 
an admirable designation for Cecil; he was imperturbable 
under everything ; even when an heiress, with feet as co- 
lossal as her fortune, made him a proposal of marriage, 
and he had to retreat from all the offered honors and 
threatened horrors, courteously, but steadily declined 
them. Nor in more interesting adventures was he less 
happy in his coolness. When my Lord Regalia, who 
never knew when he was not wanted, came in inoppor- 
tunely in a very tender scene of the young Guardsman’s 
(then but a Cornet) with his handsome Countess, Cecil 
lifted his long lashes lazily, turning to him a face of the 
most plait ilf and innocent demureness — or consummate 
impudence, whichever you like. “We’re playing Soli- 
taire. Interesting game. Queer fix, though, the ball’s 
in that’s left all alone in the middle, don’t you think ?” 
Lord Regalia felt his own similarity to the “ball in a fix” 
too keenly to appreciate the interesting character of the 
amusement, or the coolness of the chief performer in it; 
but “Beauty’s Solitaire” became a synonym thenceforth 
among the Household to typify any very tender passages 
“ sotto quartr ’ occhi .” 

This made his reputation on the town ; the ladies called 
it very wicked, but were charmed by the Richelieu-like im- 
pudence all the same, and petted the sinner ; and from 
then till now he had held his own with them; dashing 
through life very fast, as became the first riding man in 
the Brigades, but enjoying it very fully, smoothly and 
softly, lilting the world and being liked by it. 

To be sure, in the background there was always that 
ogre of money, and the beast had a knack of gnawing 
bigger and darker every year ; but then, on the other 
hand, Cecil never looked at him — never thought about 
him — knew, too, that he stood just as much behind the 
chairs of men whom the world accredited as millionaires, 


l 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 


19 


and whenever the ogre gave him a cold grip, that there 
was for the moment no escaping, washed away the touch 
of in a warm fresh draft of pleasure. 


CHAPTER II. 

THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 

“How long before the French can come up?” asked 
Wellington, hearing of the pursuit that was thundering 
close on his rear in the most critical hours of the short, 
sultry Spanish night. “ Half an hour, at least,” was the 
answer. “Very well, then, I will turn in and get some 
sleep,” said the Commaudcr-in- Chief, rolling himself in a 
cloak, and lying down in a ditch to rest as soundly for the 
single half hour as any tired drummer-boy. 

Serenely as Wellington, another hero slept profoundly, 
on the eve of a great event — o£ a great contest to be met 
when the day should break — of a critical victory, depend- 
ing on him alone to save the Guards of England from de- 
feat and shame ; their honor and their hopes rested on his 
solitary head ; by him they would be lost or saved ; bat, 
unharassed by the magnitude of the stake at issue, un- 
haunted by the past, unfretted by the future, he slumbered 
the slumber of the just. 

Not Sir Tristram, Sir Caledore, Sir Launcelot, no, nor 
Arthur himself, was ever truer knight, was ever gentler, 
braver, bolder, more stanch of heart, more loyal of soul, 
than he to whom the glory of the Brigades was trusted 
now ; never was there spirit more dauntless and fiery in 
the field, never temper kindlier and more generous with 
friends and foes. Miles of the ridge and furrow, stiff 
fences of terrible blackthorn, double posts and rails, yawn- 
ers and croppers both, tough as Shire and Stewards could 
make them, awaited him on the morrow ; on his beautiful 
lean head capfuls of money were piled by the Service and 


20 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the Talent ; and in his stride all the fame of the House- 
hold would be centered on the morrow ; but he took his 
rest like the cracker he was — standing as though he were 
on guard, and steady as a rock, a hero every inch of him. 
For he was Forest King, the great steeple-chaser, on whom 
the Guards had laid all their money for the Grand Mili- 
tary — the Soldiers’ Blue Ribbon. 

His quarters were a loose box, his camp-bed a litter of 
straw, fresh shaken down, his clothing a very handsome 
rug, hood, and quarter-piece buckled on and marked 
“B. C.;” above the manger and the door was lettered his 
own name in gold, “Forest King;” and in the panels of 
the latter were miniatures of his sire and of his dam : 
Lord of the Isles, one of the greatest hunters that the 
grass countries ever saw sent across them ; and Bayadere, 
a wild-pigeon-blue mare of Circassia. How, furthermore, 
he stretched up to his long line of ancestry by the Sove- 
reign, out of Queen of Roses ; by Belted Earl, out of 
Fallen Star ; by Marmion, out of Court Coquette, and 
straight up to the White Cockade blood, etc. etc. etc., is 
it not written in the mighty and immortal chronicle, pre- 
cious as the Koran, patrician as the Peerage, known and 
beloved to mortals as the “ Stud Book ?” 

Not an immensely large, or unusually powerful horse, 
but with race in every line of him; steel-gray in color, 
darkening well at all points, shining and soft as satin, with 
the firm muscles quivering beneath at the first touch of ex- 
citement to the high mettle and finely-strung organiza- 
tion ; the head small, lean, racer-like, “ blood ” all over ; 
with the delicate taper ears, almost transparent in full 
light ; well ribbed-up, fine shoulders, admirable girth and 
loins ; legs clean, slender, firm, promising splendid knee 
action ; sixteen hands high, and up to thirteen stone ; 
clever enough for anything, trained to close and open 
country, a perfect brook jumper, a clipper at fencing, 
taking a great deal of riding, as any one could tell by the 
set-on of his neck, but docile as a child to a well-known 
hand — such was Forest King with his English and East- 
ern strains, winner at Chertsey, Croydon, the National, 
the Granby, the Belvoir Castle, the Curragh, and all the 
gentleman-rider steeple.-chases and military sweepstakes in 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAQIE. ^ 2* 

the kingdom, and entered now, with tremendous bets on 
him, for the Gilt Yase. 

It was a crisp, cold night outside, starry, and wintry,, 
but open weather, and clear; the ground would be just 
right on the morrow, neither hard as the slate of a billiard- 
table, nor wet as the slush of a quagmire. Forest King 
slept steadily on in his warm and spacious box, dreaming 
doubtless of days of victory, cub-hunting in the reedy Oc- 
tober woods and pastures, of the ringing notes of the horn, 
and the sweet music of the pack, and the glorious quick 
burst up-wind, breasting the icy cold water, and showing 
the way over fence and bullfinch. Dozing and dreaming 
pleasantly; but alert for all that; for he awoke suddenly, 
shook himself, had a hilarious roll in the straw, and stood 
41 at attention.” 

Awake only, could you tell the generous and gallant 
promise of his perfect temper ; for there are no eyes that 
speak more truly, none on earth that are so beautiful, as 
the eyes of a horse. Forest King’s were dark as a gazelle’s, 
soft as a woman’s, brilliant as stars, a little dreamy and 
mournful, and as infinitely caressing when he looked at 
what he loved, as they could blaze full of light and fire 
when danger was near and rivalry against him. How 
loyally such eyes have looked at me over the paddock 
fence, as a wild happy gallop was suddenly broken for a 
gentle head to be softly pushed against my hand with the 
gentlest of welcomes 1 They sadly put to shame the mil- 
lion human eyes that so fast learn the lie of the world, and 
utter it as falsely as the lips. 

The steeple-chaser stood alert, every fiber of his body 
strung to pleasurable excitation ; the door opened, a hand 
held him some sugar, and the voice he loved best said 
fondly, “All right, old boy?” 

Forest King devoured the beloved dainty with true 
equine unction, rubbed his forehead against his master’s 
shoulder, and pushed his nose into the nearest pocket in 
search for more of his sweetmeat. 

“You’d eat a sugar-loaf, you dear old rascal. Put the 
gas up, George,” said his owner, while he turned up the 
body clothing to feel the firm, cool skin, loosened one of 
the bandages, passed his hand from thigh to fetlock, aud 


22 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


glanced round the box to be sure the horse had been well 
suppered and littered down. 

“ Think we shall win, Rake ?” 

Rake, with a stable lantern in his hand and a forage 
cap on one side of his head, standing a little in advance of 
a group of grooms and helpers, took a bit of straw out of 
his mouth, and smiled a smile of sublime scorn and secu- 
rity. sir ? I should be glad to know as when was 

that ere King ever beat yet, or you either, sir, for that 
matter ?” 

Bertie Cecil laughed a little languidly. 

“Well, we take a good deal of beating, I think, and 
there are not very many who can give it us ; are there, old 
fellow ?” he said to the horse, as he passed his palm over 
the withers ; “ but there are some crushers in the lot to- 
morrow; you’ll have to do all you know.” 

Forest King caught the manger with his teeth, and 
kicked in a bit of play and ate some more sugar, with 
much licking of his lips to express the nonchalance with 
which he viewed his share in the contest, and his tranquil 
certainty of bemg first past the flags. His master looked 
at him once more and sauntered out of the box. 

“ He’s in first-rate form, Rake, and right as a trivet.” 

“In course he is, sir; nobody ever laid leg over such 
cattle as all that White Cockade blood, and lie’s the very 
best of the strain,” said Rake, as he held up his lantern 
across the stable-yard, that looked doubly dark in the Feb- 
ruary night after the bright gas glare of the box. 

“ So he need be,” thought Cecil, as a bull terrier, three 
or four Gordon setters, an Alpine mastiff, and two wiry 
Skyes dashed at their chains, giving tongue in frantic de- 
light at the sound of his step, while the hounds echoed the 
welcome from their more distant kennels, and he went 
slowly across the great stone yard, with the end of a huge 
cheroot glimmering through the gloom. “ So he need be 
to pull me through. The Ducal and the October let me 
in for it enough ; I never was closer in my life. The deuce 
if I don’t do the distance to-morrow I shan’t have sov- 
ereigns enough to play pound-points at night! /don’t 
know what a man’s to do ; if he’s put into this life lie must 
go the pace of it. Why did Royal send me into the 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 


23 


Guards, if he meant to keep the screw on in this way; he‘d 
better have drafted me into a marching regiment at once, 
if lie wanted me to live upon nothing.” 

Nothing meant anything under G000Z. a year with Cecil, 
as the minimum of monetary necessities in this world, and 
a look of genuine annoyance and trouble, most unusual 
there, was on his face, the picture of carelessness and gentle 
indifference habitually, though shadowed now as he crossed 
the court-yard after his after-midnight visit to his steeple- 
chaser. He had backed Forest King heavily, and stood 
to win or lose a cracker on his own riding on the morrow; 
and, though he had found sufficient to bring him into the 
Shires, he had barely enough lying on his dressing-table, 
up in the bachelor suite within, to pay his groom’s book, 
or a notion where to get more, if the King should find his 
match, over the ridge and furrow in the morning 1 

It was not pleasant: a cynical, savage world -disgusted 
Timon derives on the whole a good amount of satisfaction 
from his break-down in the fine philippics against his con- 
temporaries that it is certain to afford, and the magnificent 
grievances with which it furnishes him ; but when life is 
very pleasant to a man, and the world very fond of him; 
when existence is perfectly smooth, — bar that single press- 
ure of money, — and is an incessantly changing kaleidoscope 
of London seasons, Paris winters, ducal houses in the hunt- 
ing months, dinners at the Pall Mall Clubs, dinners at the 
Star and Garter, dinners irreproachable everywhere, cot- 
tage for Ascot week, yachting with the R. V. Y. Club, 
Derby handicaps at Hornsey, pretty chorus-singers set up 
in Bijou villas, dashing rosieres taken over to Baden, warm 
corners in Belvoir Savernake, and Longeat battues, and 
all the rest of the general programme, with no drawback 
to it, except the duties at the Palace, the heat of a review, 
or the extravagance of a pampered lionne — then to be 
pulled up in that easy swinging gallop for sheer want of a 
golden shoe, as one may say, is abominably bitter, and re- 
quires far more philosophy to endure than Timon would 
ever manage to muster. It is a bore, an unmitigated bore, 
a harsh, hateful, unrelieved martyrdom that the world 
does not see, and that the world would not pity if it did. 

“ Never mind 1 Things will come right. Forest King 


24 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


never failed me yet ; he is as full of running as a Derby 
winner, and he’ll go over the yawners like a bird,” thought 
Cecil, who never confronted his troubles with more than 
sixty seconds’ thought, and who was of that light, impass- 
able, half-levity, half-languor of temperament that both 
throws off worry easily, and shirks it persistently. “ Suffi- 
cient for the day,” etc., was the essence of his creed ; and 
if he had enough to lay a fiver at night on the rubber, he 
was quite able to forget for the time that he wanted five 
hundred for settling-day in the morning, and had not an 
idea how to get it. There was not a trace of anxiety on 
him, when he opened a low arched door, passed down a 
corridor, and entered the warm, full light of that chamber 
of liberty, that sanctuary of the persecuted, that temple of 
refuge, thrice blessed in all its forms^Jhroughout the land, 
that consecrated Mecca of every true believer in the divin- 
ity of the meerschaum, and the paradise of the narghille, — 
the smoking-room. 

A spacious easy chamber, too, lined with the laziest of 
divans, seen just now through a fog of smoke, and tenanted 
by nearly a score of men in every imaginable loose velvet 
costume, and with faces as well known in the Park at six 
o’clock in May, and on the Heath in October, in Paris in 
January, and on the Solent in August, in Pratt’s of a sum- 
mer’s night, and on the Moors in an autumn morning, as 
though they were features that came round as regularly as 
the “July” or the Waterloo Cup. Some were puffing 
away in calm meditative comfort, in silence that they would 
not have broken for any earthly consideration ; others were 
talking hard and fast, and through the air heavily weighted 
with the varieties of tobacco, from tiny cigarettes to giant 
cheroots, from rough bowls full of cavendish to sybaritic 
rose-water hookahs, a Babel of sentences rose together : — 
“Gave him too much riding, the idiot.” “Tako the field, 
bar one.” “Nothing so good for the mare as a little niter 
and antimony in her mash.” “Not at all 1 the Regent 
and Rake cross in the old strain, always was black- tan 
with a white frill.” “ The Earl’s as good a fellow as Lady 
Flora, always give you a mount.” “ Nothing like a Kate 
Terry though on a bright day for salmon.” “ Faster thing 
I never knew ; found at twenty minutes past eleven, and 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 

killed just beyond Longdown Water at ten to twelve. ” 
All these various phrases were rushing in among each 
other, and tossed across the eddies of smoke in the conflict- 
ing of tongues* loosened in the tabagie and made eloquent, 
though slightly inarticulate, by pipe-stems ; while a tali, 
fair man, with the limbs of a Hercules, the chest of a prize* 
fighter, and the face of a Raphael Angel, known in the 
Household as Seraph, was in the full flood of a story of 
whist played under difficulties in the Doncaster express. 

“I wanted a monkey ; I wanted monkeys awfully,” he 
was stating as Forest King’s owner came into the smoking- 
room. 

“ Did you, Seraph ? The 1 Zoo ’ or the Clubs could 
supply you with apes fully developed to any amount,” said 
Bertie, as he threw himself down. 

“You be hanged!” laughed the Seraph, known to the 
rest of the world as the Marquis of Rockingham, son of 
the Duke of Lyonnesse. “ I wished monkeys, but the 
others wished ponies and hundreds, so I gave in ; Vande- 
bur and I won two rubbers, and we’d just begun the third 
when the train stopped with a crash ; none of us dropped 
the cards though, but the tricks and the scores all went 
down with the shaking. * Can’t play in that row,’ said 
Charlie, for the women were shrieking like mad, and the 
engine was roaring like my mare Philippa — I’m afraid 
she’ll never be cured, poor thing ! — so I put my head out 
and asked what was up ? We’d run into a cattle train. 
Anybody hurt ? No, nobody hurt ; but we were to get 
out. ‘ I’ll be shot if I get out,’ I told ’em, ‘till I’ve 
finished the rubber.’ ‘But you must get out,’ said the 
guard; ‘carriages must be moved.’ ‘Nobody says 
“must” to him,’ said Van (he’d drank more Perles du 
Rhin than was good for him at Doncaster); ‘don’t you 
know the Seraph?’ Man stared. ‘Yes, sir, know the 
Seraph, sir; leastways, did, sir, afore he died; see him 
once at Moulsey Mill, sir; his “one two” was amazin’. 
Waters soon thaew up the sponge.’ We were all dying 
with laughter, and I tossed him a tenner. ‘ There, my 
good fellow,’ said I, ‘ shunt the carriage and let us finish 
the game. If another train come up, give it Lord Rock- 
ingham’s compliments and say he’ll thank it to stop, be- 
3 


26 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


cause collisions shake his trumps together. ’ Man thought 
us mad, took tenner though, shunted U3 to one side out of 
the noise, and we played two rubbers more before they’d 
repaired the damage and sent us on to town.” 

And the Seraph took a long-drawn whiff from his silver 
meerschaum, and then a deep draught of soda and brandy 
to refresh himself after the narrative; — biggest, best tem- 
pered, and wildest of men in or out of the Service, de- 
spite the angelic character of his fair-haired head, and 
blue eyes that looked as clear and as innocent as those of 
a six-year old child. 

“Not the first time by a good many that you’ve 
‘shunted off the straight’ Seraph?” laughed Cecil, sub- 
stituting an amber mouth-piece for his half-finished che- 
root. “ I’ve been having a good-night look at the King. 
He’ll stay.” 

“ Of course he will,” chorused half a dozen voices. 

“ With all our pots on him,” added the Seraph. “ ne’s 
too much of a gentleman to put us all up a tree ; he knows 
he carries the honor of the Household.” 

“ There are some good mounts, there’s no denying that,” 
said Chesterfield of the Blues (who was called Tom for nc 
other reason than that it was entirely unlike his real name of 
Adolphus), where he was curled up almost invisible, except 
for the movement of the jasmine stick of his chibouque. 
“ That brute, Day Star, is a splendid fencer, and for a 
brook jumper, it would be hard to beat Wild Geranium, 
though her shoulders are not quite what they ought to be. 
Montecute, too, can ride a good thing, and lie’s got one in 
Pas de Charge.” 

“ I’m not much afraid of Monti, he makes too wild a 
burst first; he never saves one atom,” yawned Cecil, with 
the coils of his hookah bubbling among the rose-water; 
“the man I’m afraid of is that fellow from the Tenth; 
he’s as light as a feather and as hard as steel. I watched 
him yesterday going over the water, and the horse he’ll 
ride for Trelawney is good enough to beat even the King 
if he’s properly piloted.” 

“You haven’t kept yourself in condition, Beauty,” 
growled “ Tom,” with the chibouque in his mouth, “else 
nothing could give you the go-by. Its tempting Prow- 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 


27 


dence to go i»: for the Gilt Yase after such a December 
and January as you spent in Paris. Even the week you’ve 
been in the Shires you haven’t trained a bit; you’ve been 
waltzing or playing baccarat till five in the morning, and 
taking no end of sodas after to bring you right for the 
meet at nine. If a man will drink champagnes and bur- 
gundies as you do, and spend his time after women, I should 
like to know how he’s to be in hard riding condition, unless 
he expects a miracle.” 

With which Chesterfield, who weighed fourteen stone 
himself, and was, therefore, out of all but welter-races, and 
wanted a weight carrier of tremendous power even for 
them, subsided under a heap of velvet and cashmere, and 
Cecil laughed : lying on a divan just under one of the gas 
branches, the light fell full on his handsome face, with its 
fair hue and its gentle languor on which there was not a 
single trace of the outre Guidance attributed to him Both 
he and the Seraph could lead the wildest life of any men 
in Europe without looking one shadow more worn than 
the brightest beauty of the season, and could hold wassail 
in riotous rivalry till the sun rose, and then throw them- 
selves into saddle as fresh as if they had been sound asleep 
all night, to keep up with the pack the whole day in a fast 
burst or on a cold scent, or in whatever sport Fortune and 
the coverts gave them, till their second horses wound their 
way homeward through muddy, leafless lanes, when the stars 
had risen. 

“Beauty don’t believe in training. No more do I. 
Never would train for anything,” said the Seraph, now, 
pulling the long blonde moustaches that were not alto- 
gether in character with his seraphic cognomen. “If a 
man can ride, let him. If he’s born to the pig-skin he’ll 
be in at the distance safe enough, whether he smoke or 
don’t smoke, drink or don’t drink. As for training on raw 
chops, giving up wine, living like the very deuce, and all 
as if you were in a monastery, and changing yourself into 
a mere bag of bones — it’s utter bosh. You might as well 
be in purgatory; besides, it’s no more credit to win then 
than if you were a professional.” 

“But you must have trained at Christ Church, Rock, 
for the Eight ?” asked another Guardsman, Sir Yere Bel- 


28 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Iingham, “ Severe, ” as he was christened, chiefly because 
he was the easiest-going giant in existence. 

“ Did I I men came to me ; wanted me to join the 
Eight ; coxswain came, awful strict little fellow, docked 
his men of all their fun — took plenty himself though I 
Coxswain said I must begin to train, do as all his crew 
did. I threw up my sleeve and showed him my arm;” 
and the Seraph stretched out an arm magnificent enough 
for a statue of Milo. “ I said, there, sir, I’ll help you 
thrash Cambridge, if you like, but train I won't for you or 
for all the University. I’ve been Captain of the Eton 
Eight ; but I didn’t keep my crew on tea and toast. I 
fattened ’em regularly three times a week on venison and 
champagne at Christopher’s. Very happy to feed yours, 
too, if you like, game comes down to me every Friday 
from the Duke’s moors ; they look uncommonly as if they 
wanted it 1 You should have seen his face! — fatten 
the Eight ! He didn’t let me do that of course ; but he 
was very glad of my oar in his rowlocks, and I helped him 
beat Cambridge without training an hour myself, except 
so far as rowing hard went.” 

And the Marquis of Buckingham, made thirsty by the 
recollection, dipped his fair moustaches into a foaming 
seltzer. 

“ Quite right, Seraph !” said Cecil, “when a man comes 
up to the weights, looking like a homonunculus after lie’s 
been getting every atom of flesh off him like a jockey, he 
ought to be struck out for the stakes to my mind. ’Tisn’t 
a question of riding, then, nor yet of pluck, or of manage- 
ment; it’s nothing but a question of pounds, and of who 
can stand the tamest life the longest.” 

“ Well, beneficial for one’s morals, at any rate,” sug- 
gested Sir Y ere. 

“ Morals be hanged,” said Bertie, very immorally. "I’m 
glad you remind us of them, Yere, you’re such a quintes- 
cence of decorum and respectability yourself! I say — 
anybody know anything of this fellow of the Tenth that’s 
to ride Trelawney’s chestnut ?” 

“ Jimmy Delmar ! Oh, yes ; I know Jimmy,” answered 
Lord Cosmo Wentworth, of the Scots Fusileers, from the 
far depths of an arm-chair. “Knew him at Aldershot. 


/ 


THE LOOSE BOX, AND THE TABAGIE. 29 

Fine rider; give you a good bit of trouble, Beauty. 
Hasn’t been in England for years ; troop been such a while 
at Calcutta. The Fancy take to him rather ; offering very 
freely on him this morning in the Village ; and he’s got a 
rare good thing in the chestnut.” 

“Not a doubt of it. The White Lily blood, out of that 
Irish mare D’Orleans Diamonds too.” 

“ Never mind I Tenth won’t beat us. The Household 
will win safe enough, unless Forest King goes and breaks 
his back over Brixworth — eh, Beauty?” said the Seraph, 
who believed devoutly in his comrade, with all the loving 
loyalty characteristic of the House of Lyonnesse, that to 
monarchs and to friends had often cost it very dear. 

“You put your faith in the wrong quarter, Itock; I may 
fail you, he never will,” said Cecil, with ever so slight a 
dash of sadness in his words; the thought crossed him of 
how boldly, how straightly, how gallantly the horse always 
breasted and conquered his difficulties — did he himself deal 
half so well with his own ? 

“ Well 1 you both of you carry all our money and all our 
credit; so for the fair fame of the Household do ‘all you 
know.’ I haven’t hedged a shilling, not laid off a farthing, 
Bertie ; I stand on you and the King, and nothing else — 
see what a sublime faith I have in you.” 

“ I don’t think you’re wise then, Seraph ; the field will 
be very strong,” said Cecil, languidly. The answer was 
indifferent, and certainly thankless ; but under his drooped 
lids a glance, frank and warm, rested for the moment on 
the Seraph’s leonine strength and Raphaelesque head ; it 
was not his way to say it, or to show it, or even much to 
think it; but in his heart he loved his old friend wonder- 
fully well. 

And they talked on of little else than of the great steeple- 
chase of the Service, for the next hour in the Tabak-Far- 
liament, while the great clouds of scented smoke circled 
heavily round, making a halo of Turkish above the gold 
locks of the Titanic Seraph, steeping Chesterfield’s velvets 
in strong odors of Cavendish, and drifting a light rose- 
sccnted mist over Bertie’s long lithe limbs, light enough 
and skilled enough to disdain all “training for the 
weights.” 


3 * 


so 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ That's not the way to be in condition/’ growled “ Tom ” 
getting up with a great shake as the clock clanged the 
strokes of five; they had only returned from a ball three 
miles off, when Cecil had paid his visit to the loose box. 
Bertie laughed ; his laugh was like himself, rather languid 
but very light-hearted, very silvery, very engaging. 

“ Sit and smoke till breakfast time if you like, Tom ; it 
won’t make any difference to me." 

But the Smoke Parliament wouldn’t hear of the cham- 
pion of the Household over the ridge and furrow, risking 
the steadiness of bis wrist and the keenness of his eye, by 
any such additional tempting of Providence, and went off 
itself in various directions, with good-night iced drinks, 
yawning considerably like most other parliaments after a 
sitting. 

It was the old family place of the Itoyallieu House in 
which he had congregated half the Guardsmen in the Ser- 
vice for the great event, and consequently the bachelor 
chambers in it were of the utmost comfort and spacious- 
ness, and when Cecil sauntered into his old quarters, fami- 
liar from boyhood, he could not have been better off in his 
own luxurious haunts in Piccadilly. Moreover, the first 
thing that caught his eye was a dainty scarlet silk riding 
jacket broidered in gold and silver, with the motto of his 
house, “ Cceur Vaillant se fait Royaume,” all circled with 
-oak and laurel leaves on the collar. 

It was the work of very fair hands, of very aristocratic 
hands, and he looked at it with a smile. “Ah, my lady, 
my lady !” he thought half aloud, “ do you really love me ? 
Do I really love you ?” 

There was a laugh in his eyes as he asked himself what 
might be termed an interesting question ; then something 
more earnest came over his face, and he stood a second 
with the pretty costly embroideries in his hand, with a smile 
that was almost tender, though it was still much more 
amused. “I suppose we do,” he concluded at last, “at 
least quite as much as is ever worth while. Passions don’t 
do for the drawing-room, as somebody says in ‘ Conings- 
by besides, — I would not feel a strong emotion for the 
universe. Bad style always, and more detrimental to 
‘condition,’ as Tom would say, than three bottles of 
brandy !” 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 31 

Ho was so little near what he dreaded, at present at 
least, that the scarlet jacket was tossed down again, and 
gave him no dreams of its fair and titled embroideress. 
He looked out, the last thing, at some ominous clouds 
drifting heavily up before the dawn, and the state of the 
weather, and the chance of its being rainy, filled his 
thoughts, to the utter exclusion of the donor of that 
bright gold-laden dainty gift. “ I hope to goodness 
there won’t be any drenching shower. Forest King can 
stand ground as hard as a slate, but if there’s one thing 
he’s weak in it’s slush 1” was Bertie’s last conscious thought, 
as he stretched his limbs out and fell sound asleep. 


CHAPTER III. 

THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 

“Take the Field bar one.” “Two to one on Forest 
King.” “Two to one on Bay Regent.” “Fourteen to 
seven on Wild Geranium.” “ Seven to two against Brother 
to Fairy.” “Three to five on Pas de Charge.” “Nine- 
teen to six on Day Star.” “ Take the Field bar one,” rose 
above the hoarse tumultuous roar of the Ring on the clear, 
crisp, sunny morning that was shining on the Shires on the 
day of the famous steeple-chase. 

The talent had come in great muster from London ; the 
great bookmakers were there with their stentor lungs and 
their quiet, quick entry of thousands; and th&din and the 
turmoil, at the tiptop of their height, were more like a 
gathering on the Heath or before the Red House, than the 
local throngs that usually mark steeple-chase meetings, 
even when they be the Grand Military or' the Grand Na- 
tional. There were keen excitement and heavy stakes on 
the present event; the betting had never stood still a 
second in Town or the Shires ; and even the “ knowing 
ones,” the worshipers of the “flat” alone, the profes- 


32 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


siouals who ran down gentlemen races, and the hyper 
critics who affirmed that there is not such a thing as a 
steeple-chaser to be found on earth (since, to be a fencer, 
a water-jumper, and a racer, were to attain an equine per- 
fection impossible on earth, whatever it may be in “happy 
hunting ground ” of immortality), even these, one and all 
of them, came eager to see the running for the Gilt 
Vase. 

For it was known very well that the Guards had backed 
their horse tremendously, and the county laid most of its 
money on him, and the bookmakers were shy of laying off 
much against one of the first cross-country riders of the 
Service, who had landed his mount at the Grand National 
Handicap, the Billesdon Coplow, the Ealing, the Curragh, 
the Prix du Donjon, the Rastatt, and almost every other 
for which he had entered. Yet, despite this, the “ Fancy” 
took most to Bay Regent ; they thought he would cut the 
work out; his sire had won the Champagne Stakes at 
Doncaster, and the Drawing-room at “glorious Good- 
wood,” and that racing strain through the White Lily 
blood, coupled with a magnificent reputation which he 
brought from Leicestershire as a fencer, found him chief 
favor among the fraternity. 

His jockey, Jimmy Delmar, too, with his bronzed, mus- 
cular, sinewy frame, his low stature, his light weight, his 
sunburnt, acute face, and a way of carrying his hands as 
he rode that was precisely like Aldcroft’s, looked a hun- 
dred times more professional than the brilliance of 
“ Beauty,” and the reckless dash of his well-known way of 
“ sending the horse along with all he had in him,” which 
was undeniably much more like a fast kill over the Melton 
country, than like a weight-for-age race anywhere. “ You 
see the Service in his stirrups ,” said an old nobbier who 
had watched many a trial spin, lying hidden in a ditch or 
a drain ; and indisputably you did : Bertie’s riding was 
superb, but it was still the riding of a cavalryman, not of a 
jockey. The mere turn of the foot in the stirrups told it 
as the old man had the shrewdness to know. 

So the King went down at one time two points in the 
morning betting. 

“Know them flash cracks of the Household,” said Tim 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


35 


Varnet, as sharp a little Leg as ever “got on” a dark 
thing, and “went halves” with a jock who consented to 
rope a favorite at the Ducal. “ Them swells, ye see, they 
give any money for blood. They just go by Godolphin 
heads, and little feet, and winners’ strains, and all the rest 
of it ; and so long as they get pedigree never look at sub- 
stance ; and their bone comes no bigger than a deer’s. 
Now, it’s force as well as pace that tells over a bit of 
plow ; a critter that would win the Derby on the flat would 
knock up over the first spin over the clods ; and that King’s 
legs are too light for my fancy, ’andsome as ’t is ondeniable 
he looks — for a little ’un as one may say.” 

And Tim Varnet exactly expressed the dominant mis- 
trust of the talent ; despite all his race and all his exploits, 
the King was not popular in the Ring, because he was 
like his backers — “a swell.” They thought him “showy 
— very showy,” “ a picture to frame,” “ a luster to look 
at;” but they disbelieved in him, almost to a man, as 
a stayer , and they trusted him scarcely at all with their 
money. 

“ It’s plain that he’s 1 meant,’ though,” thought little 
Tim, who was so used to the “shady” in stable matters, 
that he could hardly persuade himself that even the Grand 
Military could be run fair, and would have thought a 
Guardsman or a Hussar only exercised his just privilege 
as a jockey in “roping” after selling the race, if so it 
suited his book. “ He’s 1 meant,’ that’s clear, ’cause the 
swells have put all their pots on him — but if the pots don’t 
bile over, strike me a loser 1” a contingency he knew ho 
might very well invoke, his investments being invariably so 
matchlessly arranged, that let what would be “bowled 
over,” Tim Varnet never could be. 

Whatever the King might prove, however, the Guards, 
the Flower of the Service, must stand or fall by him ; they 
had not another horse entered, so complete was the trust 
that, like the Seraph, they put in “Beauty” and his gray. 
But there was no doubt as to the tremendousness of the 
struggle lying before him. The running ground covered 
four miles and a half, and had forty-two jumps in it, exclu- 
sive of the famous Brixworth : half was grassland, and half 
ridge and furrow ; a lane with very awkward double 


34 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


fences laced in and in with the memorable blackthorn, a 
laid hedge with thick growers in it, and many another 
“ teaser,” coupled with the yawning water, made the course 
a severe one ; while thirty-two starters of unusual excel- 
lence gave a good field and promised a close race. Every 
fine bit of steeple-chase blood that was to be found in 
their studs, the Service had brought together for the great 
event ; and if the question could ever be solved, whether it 
is possible to find a strain that shall combine pace over the 
fiat, with the heart to stay over an inclosed country, the 
speed to race, with the bottom to fence and the force to 
clear water, it seemed likely to be settled now. The Ser- 
vice and the Stable had done their uttermost to reach its 
solution. 

The clock of the course pointed to half-past one; the 
saddling bell would ring at a quarter to two, for the days 
were short and darkened early ; the Stewards were all 
arrived, except the Marquis of Rockingham, and the Ring 
was in the full rush of excitement, some “ getting on” hur- 
riedly to make up for lost time, some “peppering” one or 
other of the favorites hotly, some laying off their moneys 
in a cold fit of caution, some putting capfuls on the King, 
or Bay Regent, or Pas de Charge, without hedging a 
shilling. The London talent, the agents from the great 
commission stables, the local betting men, the shrewd wise- 
acres from the Ridings, all the rest of the brotherhood of 
the Turf were crowding together with the deafening shout- 
ing common to them which sounds so tumultuous, so in- 
sane, and so unintelligible to outsiders. Amid them half the 
titled heads of England, all the great names known on the 
flat, and men in the Guards, men in the Rifles, men in the 
Light Cavalry, men in the Heavies, men in the Scots 
Grays, men in the Horse Artillery, men in all the Arms 
and all the Regiments that had sent their first riders to 
try for the Blue Ribbon, were backing their horses' with 
2rackers, and jotting down figure after figure, with jeweled 
pencils, in dainty books, taking long odds with the fielders. 
Carriages were standing in long lines along the course, the 
stands were filled with almost as bright a bevy of fashion- 
able loveliness as the Ducal brings together under the park 
.,rees of Goodwood; the horses were being led into the in-. 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


35 


closure for saddling, a brilliant sun shone for the nonce on 
the freshest of February noons; beautiful women were 
fluttering out of their barouches in furs and velvets, wear- 
ing the colors of the jockey they favored, and more pre- 
dominant than any were Cecil’s scarlet and white, only 
rivaled in prominence by the azure of the Heavy Cavalry 
champion, Sir Eyre Montacute. A drag with four bays — 
with line hunting points about them — had dashed up, late 
of course; the Seraph had swung himself from the roller- 
bolt into the saddle of his hack (one of those few rare 
hacks that are perfect , and combine every excellence of 
pace, bone, and action, under their modest appellative), 
and had cantered off to join the Stewards, while Cecil had 
gone up to a group of ladies in the Grand Stand, as if he 
had no more to do with the morning’s business than they. 
Right in front of that Stand was an artificial bullfinch that 
promised to treat most of the field to a “purler,” a deep 
ditch dug and filled with water, with two towering black- 
thorn fences on either side of it, as awkward a leap as the 
most cramped country ever showed; some were complain- 
ing of it; it was too severe, it was unfair, it would break 
the back of every horse sent at it. The other Stewards 
were not unwilling to have it tamed down a little, but the 
Seraph, generally the easiest of all sweet-tempered creat- 
ures, refused resolutely to let it be touched. 

“ Look here,” said he confidentially, as he wheeled his 
hack round to the Stand and beckoned Cecil down, “ look 
here, Beauty, they’re wanting to alter that teaser, make it 
less awkward you know, but I wouldn’t because I thought 
it would look as if I lessened it for you you know. Still 
it is a cracker and no mistake ; Brixworth itself is nothing 
to it, and if you’d like it toned down I’ll let them do 
it? ” 

“ My dear Seraph, not for worlds ! You were quite 
right not to have a thorn taken out. Why, thaVs where I 
shall thrash Bay Regent,” said Bertie serenely, as if 
the winning of the stakes had been forecast in his horo- 
scope. 

The Seraph whistled, stroking his moustaches. “Be- 
tween ourselves* Cecil, that fellow is going up no end. 
The Talent fancy him so—” 


36 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Let them,” said Cecil placidly, with a great cheroot in 
his mouth, lounging into the center of the Ring to hear 
how the betting went on his own mount, perfectly regard- 
less that he would keep them waiting at the weights while 
he dressed. Everybody there knew him by name and 
sight; and eager glances followed the tall form of the 
Guards’ champion as he moved through the press, in a 
loose brown sealskin coat, with a little strip of scarlet 
ribbon round his throat, nodding to this peer, taking evens 
with that, exchanging a whisper with a Duke, and squaring 
his book with a Jew. Murmurs followed about him as if 
he were the horse himself — “ looks in racing form” — “looks 
used up to me” — “too little hands sur ely to hold in long 
in a spin ” — “ too much length in the limbs £or a light 
weight, bone’s always awfully heavy” — “dark under the 
eye, been going too fast for trainin’ a swell all over, 
but rides no end,” with other innumerable contradictory 
phrases according as the speaker was “ on ” him or against 
him buzzed about him from the riff-raff of the Ring, in no 
way disturbing his serene equanimity. 

One man, a big fellow, “ ossy ” all over, with the genuine 
sporting cut-away coat, and a superabundance of showy 
necktie and bad jewelry, eyed him curiously, and slightly 
turned so that his back was toward Bertie, as the latter 
was entering a bet with another Guardsman well known 
on the turf, and he himself was taking lohg odds with little 
Berk Cecil, the boy having betted on his brother’s riding, 
as though he had the Bank of England at his back. In- 
deed, save that the lad had the hereditary Royallieu in- 
stinct of extravagance, and, with a half thoughtless, half 
willful improvidence, piled debts and difficulties on his 
rather brainless and boyish head, he had much more to de- 
pend on than his elder ; old Lord Royallieu doted on him, 
spoilt him, and denied him nothing, though himself a stern, 
austere, passionate man, made irascible by ill health, and, 
in his fits of anger, a very terrible personage indeed, no 
more to be conciliated by persuasion than iron is to be 
bent by the hand ; so terrible, that even his pet dreaded 
him mortally, and came to Bertie to get his imprudences 
and peccadilloes covered from the Viscount’s sight. 

Glancing round at this moment as he stood iu the Ring, 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


37 


Cecil saw the betting man with whom Berkeley was tak- 
ing long odds on the race ; he raised his eyebrows, and 
his face darkened for a second, though resuming his habit- 
ual listless serenity almost immediately. 

“You remember that case of welching after the Ebor 
St. Leger, Con ?” he said in a low tone to the Earl of 
Constantia, with whom he was talking. The Earl nodded 
assent; every one had heard of it, and a very flagrant 
case it was. 

“ There’s the fellow,” said Cecil, laconically, and strode 
toward him with his long, lounging cavalry swing. The 
man turned pallid under his florid skin, and tried to edge 
imperceptibly away ; but the density of the throng pre- 
vented his moving quickly enough to evade Cecil, who 
stooped his head, and said a word in his ear. It was 
briefly : 

“ Leave the ring.” 

The rascal, half bully, half coward, rallied from the 
startled fear into which his first recognition by the Guards- 
man (who had been the chief witness against him in a very 
scandalous matter at York, and who had warned him that 
if he ever saw him again in the Ring he would have him 
turned out of it) had thrown him, and, relying on inso- 
lence and the numbers of his fraternity to back him out of 
it, stood his ground. 

“I’ve as much right here as you swells,” he said, with a 
hoarse laugh. “Are you the whole Jockey Club, that you 
come it to a honest gentleman like that ?” 

Cecil looked down on him slightly amused, immeasura- 
bly disgusted ; — of all earth’s terrors, there was not one 
so great for him as a scene, and the eager bloodshot eyes 
of the Ring were turning on them by the thousand, and 
the loud shouting of the bookmakers was thundering out, 
“ What’s up ?” 

“ My ‘honest gentleman,’” he said, wearily, “tee<ve this, 
I tell you; do you hear ?” 

“Make me I” retorted the “ Welcher,” defiant in his 
stout-built square strength, and ready to brazen the matter 
out. “ Make me, my cock o’ fine feathers 1 Put me out 
of the ring if you can, Mr. Dainty Limbs 1 I’ve as much 
business here as you.” 


4 


38 


UNDER TWO PLAGS. 


The words were hardly out of his mouth, before, light 
as a deer and close as steel, Cecil’s hand was on his collar, 
and without any seeming effort, without the slightest pas- 
sion, he calmly lifted him off the ground, as though he 
were a terrier, and thrust him through the throng ; Ben 
Davis, as the Welcher was named, meantime being so 
amazed at such unlooked-for might in the grasp of the 
gentlest, idlest, most gracefully made, and indolently tem- 
pered of his born foes and prey, “the swells,” that he let 
himself be forced along backward in sheer passive paraly- 
sis of astonishment, while Bertie, profoundly insensible to 
the tumult that began to rise and roar about him, from 
those who were not too absorbed in the business of the 
morning to note what took place, thrust him along in the 
single clasp of his right hand outward to where the run- 
ning ground swept past the Stand, and threw him lightly, 
easily, just as one may throw a lap-dog to take his bath, 
into the artificial ditch filled with water that the Seraph 
had pointed out as “ a teaser.” The man fell unhurt, un- 
bruised, so gently was he dropped on his back among the 
muddy, chilly water, and the overhanging brambles ; and, 
as he rose from the ducking, a shudder of ferocious and 
filthy oaths poured from his lips, increased tenfold by the 
uproarious laughter of the crowd, who knew him as “a 
Welcher,” and thought him only too well served. 

Policemen rushed in at all points, rural and metropoli- 
tan, breathless, austere, and, of course, too late. Bertie 
turned to them, with a slight wave of his hand, to sign 
them away. 

“ Don’t trouble yourselves 1 It’s nothing you could in- 
terfere in ; take care that person does not come into the 
betting ring again, that’s all.” 

The Seraph, Lord Constantia, Wentworth, and many 
others of his set, catching sight of the turmoil and of 
“ Beauty,” with the great square-set figure of Ben Davis 
pressed before him through the piob, forced their way up 
as quickly as they could ; but before they reached the spot 
Cecil was sauntering back to meet them, cool and listless, 
and a little bored with so much exertion, his cheroot in 
his mouth, and his ear serenely deaf to the clamor about 
the ditch. 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


39 


He looked apologetically at the Seraph and the others ; 
he felt some apology was required for having so far wan- 
dered from all the canons of his Order as to have ap- 
proached “a row,” and run the risk of a scene. 

“Turf must be cleared of these scamps, you see,” he 
said, with a half sigh. “Law can’t do anything. Fellow 
was trying to * get on ’ with the young one, too. Don't 
bet with those riff-raff, Berk. The great bookmakers will 
make you dead money, and the little Legs will do worse to 
you.” 

The boy hung his head, but looked sulky rather than 
thankful for his brother’s interference with himself and the 
Welcher. 

“ You have done the Turf a service, Beauty — a very 
great service ; there’s no doubt about that,” said the 
Seraph. “ Law can’t do anything, as you say; opinion 
must clear the ring of such rascals; a Welcher ought not 
to dare to show his face here ; but, at the same time, you 
oughtn’t to have gone unsteadying your muscle, and risk- 
ing the firmness of your hand at such a minute as this, 
with pitching that fellow over. Why couldn’t you wait 
till afterward ? or have let me do it ?” 

“My dear Seraph,” murmured Bertie, languidly, “ I’ve 
gone in to-day for exertion ; a little more or less is no- 
thing. Besides, Welehers are slippery dogs, you know.” 

He did not add that it was having seen Ben Davis tak- 
ing odds with his young brother which had spurred him to 
such instantaneous action with that disreputable person- 
age, who, beyond doubt, only received a tithe part of his 
deserts, and merited to be double-thonged off every course 
in the kingdom. 

Rake at that instant darted panting like a hot retriever 
out of the throng. “ Mr. Cecil, sir, will you please 
come to the weights — the saddling bell’s a going to ring, 
and ” 

“ Tell them to wait for t me ; I shall only be twenty min- 
utes dressing,” said Cecil, quietly, regardless that the time 
at which the horses should have been at the starting-post 
was then clanging from the clock within the Grand Stand. 
Did you ever go to a gentleman-ride race where the jocks 
were not at least an hour behind time, and considered 


40 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


themselves, on the whole, very tolerably punctual ? At 
last, however, he sauntered into the dressing-shed, and was 
aided by Rake into tops that had at length achieved a 
spotless triumph, and the scarlet gold-broidered jacket of 
his fair friend’s art w^th' white hoops, and the “Cceur Yail- 
lant se fait Royaume ” on the collar, and the white gleam- 
ing sash to be worn across it, fringed by the same fair 
hands with silver. 

Meanwhile, the “ Welcher,” driven off the course by a 
hooting and indignant crowd, shaking the water from his 
clothes, with bitter oaths, and livid with a deadly passion 
at his exile from the harvest-field of his lawless gleanings, 
went his way, with a savage vow of vengeance against the 
“d — d dandy,” the “ Guards’ swell,” who had sh«wn him 
up before the world as the scoundrel he was. 

The bell was clanging and clashing passionately, as 
Cecil at last went down to the weights, all his friends of 
the Household about him, and all standing “crushers” on 
their champion, for their stringent esprit du corps was in- 
volved, and the Guards are never backward in putting 
their gold down, as all the world knows. In the inclo- 
sure, the cynosure of devouring eyes, stood the King, with 
the sang froid of a superb gentleman, amid the clamor 
raging round him, one delicate ear laid back now and 
then, but otherwise indifferent to the din, with his coat 
glistening like satin, the beautiful tracery of vein and mus- 
cle, like the veins of vine-leaves, standing out on the 
glossy, clear-carved neck that had the arch of Circassia, 
and his dark, antelope eyes gazing with a gentle, pensive 
earnestness on the shouting crowd. 

His rivals, too, were beyond par in fitness and in condi- 
tion, and there were magnificent animals among them. 
Bay Regent was a huge raking chestnut, upwards of six- 
teen hands, and enormously powerful, with very fine shoul- 
ders, and an all-over-like-going head ; he belonged to a 
Colonel in the Rifles, but was to be ridden by Jimmy Del- 
mar of the 10th Lancers, whose colors were violet wuh 
orange hoops. Montacute’s horse, Pas de Charge, which 
carried all the money of the Heavy Cavalry, Montacute 
himself being in the Dragoon Guards, was of much the 
same order, a black hunter with racing-blood in him, lo’ua 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


41 


and withers that assured any amount of force, and no fault 
but that of a rather coarse head, traceable to a slur on his 
’scutcheon on the distaff side from a plebeian great-grand- 
mother, who had been a cart mare, the only stain in his 
otherwise faultless pedigree. However, she had given him 
her massive shoulders, so that he was in some sense a 
gainer by her after all. Wild Geranium was a beautiful 
creature enough, a bright bay Irish mare, with that rich 
red gloss that is like the glow of a horse chestnut, very 
perfect in shape, though a trifle light perhaps, and with 
not quite strength enough in neck or barrel ; she would 
jump the fences of her own paddock half a dozen times a 
day for sheer amusement, and- was game to anything.* 
She was entered by Cartouche of the Enniskillens, to be 
ridden by “ Baby Grafton,” of the same corps, a feather 
weight, and quite a boy, but with plenty of science in him. 
These were the three favorites ; Day Star ran them close, 
the property of Durham Yavassour, of the Scots Grays, 
and to be ridden by his owner, a handsome, flea-bitten, 
gray sixteen-hander, with ragged hips, and action that 
looked a trifle string-halty, but noble shoulders, and great 
force in the loins and withers; the rest of the field, though 
unusually excellent, did not find so many “ sweet voices ” 
for them, and were not so much to be feared : each starter 
was of course much backed by his party, but the betting 
was tolerably even on these four: — all famous steeple- 
chasers; — the King at one time, and Bay Regent at an- 
other, slightly leading in the Ring. 

Thirty-two starters were hoisted up on the telegraph 
board, and as the field got at last under weigh, uncom- 
monly handsome they looked, while the silk jackets of all 
the colors of the rainbow glittered in the bright noon-sun. 
As Forest King closed in, perfectly tranquil still, but, be- 
ginning to glow and quiver all over with excitement, know- 
ing as well as his rider the work that was before him, and 
longing for it in every muscle and every limb, while his 


* The portrait of this lady is that of a very esteemed young Irish 
beauty of my acquaintance; she this season did seventy-six miles 
on a warm June day, and ate her corn and tares afterward as if 
nothing happened. She is six years old. 

4 * 


42 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


eyes flashed fire as he pulled at the curb and tossed his 
head aloft, there went up a general shout of “ Favorite 1” 
His beauty told on the populace, and even somewhat on 
the professionals, though the legs kept a strong business 
prejudice against the working powers of “the Guards’ 
crack.” The ladies began to lay dozens in gloves on him ; 
not altogether for his points, which, perhaps, they hardly 
appreciated, but for his owner and rider, who, in the scar- 
let and gold, with the white sash across his chest, and a 
look of serene indifference on his face, they considered the 
handsomest man of the field. The Household is usually 
safe to win the suffrages of the sex. 

In the throng on the course Rake instantly bonneted an 
audacious dealer who had ventured to consider that Forest 
King was “light and curby in the ’ock.” “You’re a wise 
’un, you are 1” retorted the wrathful and ever-eloquent 
Rake, “there’s more strength in his clean flat legs, bless 
him 1 than in all the round, thick, mill-posts of your lialf- 
breds, that have no more tendon than a bit of wood, aud 
are just as flabby as a sponge 1” Which hit the dealer 
home just as his hat was hit over his eyes ; Rake’s argu- 
ments being unquestionable in their- force. 

The thoroughbreds pulled and fretted, and swerved in 
their impatience; one or two overcontumacious bolted in- 
continently, others put their heads between their knees in 
the endeavor to draw their riders over their withers ; Wild 
Geranium reared straight upright, fidgeted all over with 
longing to be off, passaged with the prettiest, wickedest 
grace in the world, and would have given the world to 
neigh if she had dared, but she knew it would be very bad 
style, so like an aristocrat as she was, restrained herself; 
Ray Regent almost sawed Jimmy Delmar’s arms off, look- 
ing like a Titap Bucephalus ; while Forest King, with his 
nostrils dilated till the scarlet tinge on them glowed in the 
sun, his muscles quivering with excitement as intense as 
the little Irish mare’s, and all his Eastern and English 
blood on fire for the fray, stood steady as a statue for all 
that, under the curb of a hand light as a woman’s, but firm 
as iron to control, and used to guide him by the slightest 
touch. 

All eyes were on that throng of the first mounts in the 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


43 


Service ; brilliant glances by tbe hundred gleamed down 
behind hot-house bouquets of their chosen color, eager 
ones by the thousand stared thirstily from the crowded 
course, the roar of the Ring subsided for a second, a 
breathless attention and suspense succeeded it; the Guards- 
men sat on their drags, or lounged near the ladies with 
their race-glasses ready, and their habitual expression of 
gentle and resigned weariness in nowise altered, because 
the Household, all in all, had from sixty to seventy thou- 
sand on the event, and the Seraph murmured mournfully 
to his cheroot, “that chestnut’s no end JU, n strong as his 
faith was in the champion of the Brigades. 

A moment’s good start was caught — the flag dropped — 
off they went sweeping out for the first second like a line 
of Cavalry about to charge. 

Another moment, and they were scattered over the first 
field, Forest King, Wild Geranium, and Bay Regent lead- 
ing for two lengths, when Montacute, with his habitual 
“fast burst,” sent Pas de Charge past them like lightning. 
The Irish mare gave a rush and got alongside of him ; the 
King would have done the same, but Cecil checked him 
and kept him in that cool swinging canter which covered 
the grassland so lightly; Bay Regent’s vast thundering 
stride was Olympian, but Jimmy Delmar saw his worst foe 
in the “Guard’s Crack,” and waited on him warily, riding 
superbly himself. 

The first fence disposed of half the field, they crossed 
the second in the same order, Wild Geranium racing neck 
to neck with Pas de Charge ; the King was all athirst to 
join the duello, but his owner kept him gently back, saving 
his pace and lifting him over the jumps as easily as a lap- 
wing. The second fence proved a cropper to several, some 
awkward falls took place over it, and tailing commenced ; 
after the third field, which was heavy plow, all knocked off 
but eight, and the real struggle began in sharp earnest: a 
good dozen who had shown a splendid stride over the grass 
being done up by the terrible work on the clods. 

Tne five favorites had it all to themselves ; Day Star 
pounding onward at tremendous speed, Pas de Charge 
giving slight symptoms of distress owing to the madness 
of his first burst, the Irish mare literally flying ahead of 


44 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


him, Forest King and the chestnut waiting on one an« 
other. 

In the Grand Stand the Seraph’s eyes strained after the 
Scarlet and White, and he muttered in his moustaches, 
“ Ye God’s, what’s up ! The world’s coming to an end ! 
— Beauty’s turned cautious I” 

Cautious, indeed, — with that giant of Pytchley fame 
running neck to neck by him ; cautious, — with two-thirds 
of the course unrun, and all the yawners yet to come; cau- 
tious, — with the blood of Forest King lashing to boiling 
heat, and the wondrous greyhound stride stretching out 
faster and faster beneath him, ready at a touch to break 
away and take the lead : but he would be reckless enough 
by-and-by ; reckless, as his nature was, under the indolent 
serenity of habit. 

Two more fences came, laced high and stiff with the 
Shire thorn, and with scarce twenty feet between them, the 
heavy plowed land leading to them, clotted, and black, and 
hard, with the fresh earthy scent steaming up as the hoofs 
struck the clods with a dull thunder: — Pas de Charge rose 
to the first : distressed too early, his hind feet caught in 
the thorn, and he came down rolling clear of his rider; 
Montaeute picked him up with true science, but the day 
was lost to the Heavy Cavalry men. Forest King went 
in and out over both like a bird and led for the first time ; 
the chestnut was not to be beat at fencing and ran even 
with him; Wild Geranium flew still as fleet as a deer, true 
to her sex she would not bear rivalry ; but little Grafton, 
though he rode like a professional, was but a young one, 
and went too wildly, her spirit wanted cooler curb. 

And now only, Cecil loosened the King to his full will 
and his full speed. Now only, the beautiful Arab head was 
stretched like a racer’s in the run-in for the Derby, and the 
grand stride swept out till the hoofs seemed never to touch 
the dark earth they skimmed over; neither whip nor spur 
was needed, Bertie had only to leave the gallant temper 
and the generous fire that were roused in their might, to 
go their way, and hold their own. His hands were low; 
his head a little back; his face very calm, the eyes only 
had a daring, eager, resolute will lighting in them; Brix- 
worth lay before him. He know well what Forest King 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


45 


could do ; but he did not know how great the chestnut Re- 
gent’s powers might be. 

The water gleamed before them, brown and swollen, and 
deepened with the meltings of winter snows a month be- 
fore ; the brook that has brought so many to grief over its 
famous banks, since cavaliers leapt it with their falcon on 
their wrist, or the mellow note of the horn rang over the 
woods in the hunting days of Stuart reigns. They knew 
it well, that long dark line, skimmering there in the sun- 
light, the test that all must pass who go in for the Soldiers’ 
Blue Ribbon. Forest King scented water, and went on 
with his ears pointed, and his greyhound stride lengthen- 
ing, quickening, gathering up all its force and its impetus 
for the leap that was before — then like the rise and the 
swoop of a heron he spanned the water, and, landing clear, 
launched forward with the lunge of a spear darted through 
air. Brixworth was passed — the Scarlet and White, a 
mere gleam of bright color, a mere speck in the landscape, 
to the breathless crowds in the stand, sped on over the 
brown and level grassland ; two and a quarter miles done 
in four minutes and twenty seconds. Bay Regent was 
scarcely behind him ; the chestnut abhorred the water, but 
a finer trained hunter was never sent over the Shires, and 
Jimmy Delmar rode like Grimshaw himself. The giant 
took the leap in magnificent style, and thundered on neck 
and neck with the “Guards’ Crack.” The Irish mare fol- 
lowed, and with miraculous gameness, landed safely; but 
her hind legs slipped on the bank, a moment was lost, and 
“ Baby” Grafton scarce knew enough to recover it, though 
he scoured on nothing daunted. 

Pas de Charge, much behind, refused the yawner, his 
strength was not more than his courage, but both had been 
strained too severely at first. Montacute struck the spurs 
into him with a savage blow over the head; the madness 
was its own punishment; the poor brute rose blindly to 
the jump, and missed the bank with a reel and a crash; 
Sir Eyre was hurled out into the brook, and the hope of 
the Heavies lay there with his breast and forelegs resting 
on the ground, his hind quarters in the water, and his back 
broken. Pas de Charge would never again see the start- 
ing flag waved, or hear the music of the hounds, or feel the 


46 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


gallant life throb and glow through him at the rallying 
notes of the horn. His race was run. 

Not knowing, or looking, or heeding what happened be- 
hind, the trio tore on over the meadow and the plowed; 
the two favorites neck by neck, the game little mare hope- 
lessly behind through that one fatal moment over Brix- 
worth. The turning-flags were passed ; from the crowds 
on the course a great hoarse roar came louder and louder, 
and the shouts rang, changing every second, “ Forest King 
wins,” “Bay Regent wins,” “Scarlet and White’s ahead,” 
“Violet’s up with him,” “Violet’s past him,” “ Scarlet re- 
covers,” “Scarlet beats,” “A cracker on the King,” “Ten 
to one on the Regent,” “Guards are over the fence first,” 
“Guards are winning,” “Guards are losing,” “Guards are 
beat ! 1” 

Were they ! 

As the shout rose, Cecil’s left stirrup-leather snapped 
and gave way ; at the pace they were going most men, ay, 
and good riders too, would have been hurled out of their 
‘saddle by the shock; he scarcely swerved ; a moment to 
ease the King and to recover his equilibrium, then he took 
the pace up again as though nothing had chanced. And 
his comrades of the Household when they saw this through 
their race-glasses, broke through theit serenity and burst 
into a cheer that echoed over the grasslands and the cop- 
pices like a clarion, the grand rich voice of the Seraph 
leading foremost and loudest — a cheer that rolled mellow 
and triumphant down the cold bright air like the blast of 
trumpets, and thrilled on Bertie’s ear where he came down 
the course a mile away. It made his heart beat quicker 
with a victorious headlong delight, as his knees pressed 
closer into Forest King’s flanks, and, half stirrupless like 
the Arabs, he thundered forward to the greatest riding 
feat of his life. His face was very calm still, but his blood 
was in tumult, the delirium of pace has got on him, a 
minute of life like this was worth a year, and he knew that 
lie would win or die for it, as the land seemed to fly like a 
black sheet under him, and, in that killing speed, fence and 
hedge and double and water all went by him like a dream, 
whirling underneath him as the gray stretches, stomach to 
earth, over the level, and rose to leap after leap. 


THE SOLDIERS* BLUE RIBBON. 


47 


For that instant’s pause, when the stirrup broke, threat- 
ened to lose him the race. 

He was more than a length behind the Regent, whose 
hoofs as they dashed the ground up sounded like thunder, 
and for whose herculean strength the plow has no terrors ; 
it was more than the lead to keep now, there was ground 
to cover, and the King was losing like Wild Geranium. 
Cecil felt drunk with that strong keen, west wind that blew 
so strongly in his teeth, a passionate excitation was in him, 
every breath of winter air that rushed in its bracing cur- 
rents round him seemed to lash him like a stripe: — the 
Household to look on and see him beaten ! 

Certain wild blood that lay latent in Cecil under the 
tranquil gentleness of temper and of custom, woke, and 
had the mastery; he set his teeth hard, and his hands 
clinched like steel on the bridle, “Oh! my beauty, my 
beauty,” he cried, all unconsciously half aloud as 'they clear 
the thirty-sixth fence. “ Kill me if you like, but don’t fail 
me !” 

As though Forest King heard the prayer and answered it 
with all his hero’s heart, the splendid form launched faster 
out, the stretching stride stretched farther yet with light- 
ning spontaneity, every fiber straiued, every nerve strug- 
gled, with a magnificent bound like an antelope the Gray 
recovered the ground he had lost, and passed Bay Regent 
by a quarter-length. It was a neck to neck race once more, 
across the three meadows with the last and lower fences 
that were between them and the final leap of all ; that ditch 
of artificial water with the towering double hedge of oak 
rails and of blackthorn that was reared black and grim and 
well-nigh hopeless just in front of the Grand Stand. A 
roar like the roar of the sea broke up from the thronged 
course as the crowd hung breathless on the even race; ten 
thousand shouts rang as thrice ten thousand eyes watched 
the closing contest, as superb a sight as the Shires ever 
saw while the two ran together, the gigantic Chestnut, 
with every massive sinew swelled and strained to tension, 
side by side with the marvelous grace, the shining flanks, 
and the Arabian-like head of the Guards’ horse. 

Louder and wilder the shrieked tumult rose: “The 
Chestnut beats 1” “ The Gray beats l” “ Scarlet’s ahead l” 


48 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Bay Regent’s caught him 1” “ Yiolet’s winning, Yiolet’s 
winning 1” “The King’s neck by neck!” “The King’s 
beating I” “The Guards will get it !” “The Guards’ crack 
has it !” “ Not yet, not yet 1” “ Yiolet will thrash him at 
the jump !” “Now for it!” “The Guards, the Guards, 
the Guards !” “ Scarlet will win !” “ The King has the 
finish 1” “No, no, no, no !” 

Sent along at a pace that Epsom flat never eclipsed, 
sweeping by the Grand Stand like the flash of electric 
flame, they ran side to side one moment more, their foam 
flung on each other’s withers, their breath hot in each 
other’s nostrils, while the dark earth flew beneath their 
stride. The blackthorn was in front behind five bars of 
solid oak, the water yawning on its farther side, black and 
deep, and fenced, twelve feet wide if it were an inch, with 
the same thorn wall beyond it; a leap no horse should 
have been given, no Steward should have set. Cecil 
pressed his knees clo-ser and closer, and worked the gallant 
hero for the test; the surging roar of the throug, though 
so close, was dull on his ear; he heard nothing, knew 
nothing, saw nothing but that lean chestnut head beside 
him, the dull thud, on the turf of the flying gallop, and 
the black wall that reared in his face. Forest King had 
done so much, could he have stay and strength for this? 

Cecil’s hands clinched unconsciously on the bridle, and 
his face was very pale — pale with excitation — as his foot 
where the stirrup was broken crushed closer and harder 
against the Gray’s flanks. 

“ Oh, my darling, my beauty — now!” 

One touch of the spur — the first — and Forest King rose 
at the leap, all the life and power there were in him gath- 
ered for one superhuman and crowning effort ; a flash of 
time, not half a second in duration, and he was lifted in 
the air higher, and higher, and higher in the cold, fresh, 
wild winter wind ; stakes and rails, and thorn and water 
lay beneath him black and gaunt and shapeless, yawning 
like a grave; one bound, even in mid-air, one last con- 
vulsive impulse of the gathered limbs, and Forest King 
was over 1 

And as he galloped up the straight run-in, he was alone 

Bay Regent had refused the leap. 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


49 


As the Gray swept to the Judge’s chair, the air was rent 
with deafening cheers that seemed to reel like drunken 
shouts from the multitude. “ The Guards win, the Guards 
win;” and when his rider pulled up at the distance with 
the full sun shining on the scarlet and white, with the gold 
glisten of the embroidered “Coeur Vaillant se fait Roy- 
numc,” Forest King stood in all his glory, winner of the 
Soldiers’ Blue Iiibbon, by a feat without its parallel in alL 
the annals of the Gold Vase. 

But as the crowd surged about him, and the mad cheer- 
ing crowned his victory, and the Household in the splen- 
dor of their triumph and the fullness of their gratitude 
rushed from the drags and the stands to cluster to his sad- 
dle, Bertie looked as serenely and listlessly nonchalant as 
of old, while he nodded to the Seraph with a gentle smile. 

“ Rather £ close finish, eh ? Have you any Moselle Cup 
going there ? I’m a little thirsty.” 

Outsiders would much sooner have thought him defeated 
than triumphant ; no one, who had not known him, could 
possibly have imagined that; he had been successful ; an 
ordinary spectator would have concluded that, judging by 
the resigned weariness of his features, he had won the race 
greatly against his own will, and to his own infinite ennui. 
No one could have dreamt that he was thinking in his 
heart of hearts how passionately he loved the gallant beast 
that had been victor with him, and that, if he had followed 
out the momentary impulse in him, he could have put hi3 
arms round the noble bowed neck and kissed the horse like 
a woman ! 

The Moselle Cup was brought to refresh the tired cham- 
pion, and before he drank it Bertie glanced at a certain 
place in the Grand Stand and bent his head as the cup 
touched his lips: it was a dedication of his victory to the 
Queen of Beauty. Then he threw himself lightly out of 
saddle, and, as Forest King was led away for the after cere- 
mony of bottling, rubbing, and clothing, his rider, regard- 
less of the roar and hubbub of the course, and of the 
tumultuous cheers, that welcomed both him and his horse 
from the men who pressed round him, into whose pockets 

D 5 


50 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


he had put thousands on thousands, and whose ringing 
hurrahs greeted the “ Guards’ Crack,” passed straight up 
toward Jimmy Delmar and held out his hand. 

“ You gave me a close thing, Major Delmar. The Yase 
is as much yours as mine; if your Chestnut had been as 
good a water jumper as he is a fencer, we should have been 
neck to neck at the finish.” 

The browned Indian-sunned face of the Lancer broke 
up into a cordial smile, and he shook the hand held out to 
him warmly; defeat and disappointment had cut him to 
the core, for Jimmy was the first riding man of the Light 
Cavalry ; but he would not have been the frank campaigner 
that he was if he had not responded to the graceful and 
generous overture of his rival and conqueror. 

“Oh, I can take a beating,” he said, good humoredly; 
“ at any rate, I am beat by the Guards, and it is very little 
humiliation to lose against such riding as yours and such 
a magnificent brute as your King. I congratulate you 
most heartily, most sincerely.” 

And he meant it, too. Jimmy never canted, nor did he 
ever throw the blame, with paltry savage vindictiveness, 
on the horse he had ridden. Some men there are — their 
name is legion — who never allow that it is their fault when 
they are “nowhere;” — oh, no ! it is the “cursed screw” 
always, according to them. But a very good rider will not 
tell you that. 

Cecil, while he talked, was glancing up at the Grand 
Stand, and when the others dispersed to look over the 
horses, and he had put himself out of his shell into his 
sealskin in the dressing-shed, he went up thither without 
a moment’s loss of time. 

He knew them all ; those dainty beauties with their deli- 
cate cheeks just brightened by the western winterly wind, 
and their rich furs and laces glowing among the colors of 
their respective heroes; he was the pet of them all; 
“ Beauty ” had the suffrages of the sex without exception ; 
he was received with bright smiles and graceful congratu- 
lations, even from those who had espoused Eyre Monta- 
cute’s cause, and still fluttered their losing azure, though 
the poor hunter lay dead, with his back broken, and a pis- 
tol-ball mercifully sent through his brains — the martyr to 


THE SOLDIERS’ BLUE RIBBON. 


51 


a man’s hot haste, as the dumb things have ever been since 
creation began. 

Cecil passed them as rapidly as he could for one so well 
received by them, and made his way to the center of the 
Stand, to the same spot at which he had glanced when he 
had drunk the Moselle. 

A lady turned to him ; she looked like a rose camellia 
in her floating scarlet and white, just toned down and made 
perfect by a shower of Spanish lace; a beautiful brunette, 
dashing, yet delicate ; a little fast, yet intensely thorough- 
bred ; a coquette who would smoke a cigarette, yet a peer- 
ess who would never lose her dignity. 

“ Au cceur vaillant rien d’ impossible /” she said, with 
an envoi of her lorgnon, and a smile that should have in- 
toxicated him — a smile that might have rewarded a Riche- 
panse for a Ilohenlinden. “Superbly ridden 1 I abso- 
lutely trembled for you as you lifted the King to that last 
leap. It was terrible 1” 

It was terrible ; and a woman, to say nothing of a woman 
who was in love with him, might well have felt a heart- 
sick fear at sight of that yawning water, and jthose tower- 
ing walls of blackthorn, where one touch of the hoofs on 
the topmost bough, one spring too short of'the gathered 
limbs, must have been death to both horse andrhjer. But, 
as she said it, she was smiling, radiant, full of easy calm and 
racing interest, as became her ladyship who had had “ bets 
at even” before now on Goodwood fillies, and could lead the 
first flight over the Belvoir and the Quorn countries. It 
was possible that her ladyship was too thorougjhbred%not 
to see a man killed over the oak-rails without deviating 
into unseemly emotion, or being capable of such bajfstyle 
as to be agitated. 

Bertie, however, in answer, threw the tenderest eloquence 
into his eyes ; very learned in such eloquence. 

“ If I could not have been victorious while you looked 
on, I would at least not have lived to meet you here !” 

She laughed a little, so did he ; they were used to ex- 
cnange these passages in an admirably artistic masquerade, 
but it wa 3 always a little droll to each of them to see the 
other wear the domino of sentiment, and neither had much 
credence in the other. 


52 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“What a preux chevalier!” cried his Queen of Beauty. 
“You would have died in a ditch out of homage to me. 
Who shall say that chivalry is past ? Tell me, Bertie, is 
it so very delightful that desperate effort to break your 
neck ? It looks pleasant, to judge by its effects. It is 
the only thing in the world that amuses you !” 

“Well — there is a great deal to be said for it,” replied 
Bertie, musingly. “ You see, until one has broken one’s 
neck, the excitement of the thing isn’t totally worn out ; 
can’t be, naturally, because the — what-do-you-call-it ? — 
consummation isn’t attained till then. The worst of it is, 
it’s getting commonplace, getting vulgar, such a number 
break their necks, doing Alps and that sort of thing, that 
we shall have nothing at all left to ourselves soon.” 

“Not even the monopoly of sporting suicide! Yery 
hard,” said her ladyship, with the lowest, most languid 
laugh in the world, very like “ Beauty’s ” own, save that 
it had a considerable inflection of studied affectation, of 
which he, however much of a dandy he was, was wholly 
guiltless. “Well ! you won magnificently; that little black 
man, who is he ? Lancers, somebody said ? — ran you so 
fearfully close. I really thought at one time that the 
Guards had lost.” 

“ Do you suppose that a man happy enough to wear Lady 
Guenevere’s colors could lose ? An embroidered scarf given 
by such hands has been a gage of victory ever since the 
days of tournaments !” murmured Cecil with the softest 
tenderness, but just enough laziness in the tone and laugh- 
ter in the eye to make it highly doubtful whether he was 
not laughing both at her and at himself, and was wonder- 
ing why the deuce a fellow had to talk such nonsense. Yet 
she was Lady Guenevere, with whom he had been in love 
ever since they stayed together at Belvoir for the Croxton 
Park week the autumn previous ; and who was beautiful 
enough to make their “ friendship ” as enchanting as a 
page out of the “ Decamerone.” And while he bent over 
her, flirting in the fashion that made him the darling of 
the drawing-rooms, and looking down into her superb Ve- 
lasquez eyes, he did not know, and if he had known would 
have been careless of it, that afar off, white with rage, and 
with his gaze straining on to the course through his race- 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


53 


glass, Ben Davis, “ the Weleher,” who had watched tho 
finish — watched the “Guards’ Crack” landed at the dis- 
tance — muttered, with a mastiff’s savage growl : 

“ He wins, does he ? Curse him 1 The d — d swell — he 
shan’t win long.” 


CHAPTER IV. 

LO\ E A LA MODE. 

Life was very pleasant at Royallieu. 

It lay in the Melton country, and was equally well placed 
for Pytchley, Quorn, and Belvoir, besides possessing its 
own small but very perfect pack of “ little ladies,” or the 
“demoiselles,” as they were severally nicknamed; the 
game was closely preserved, pheasants were fed on Indian 
corn till they were the finest birds in the country, and in 
the little winding paths of the elder and bilberry coverts 
thirty first-rate shots, with two loading-men to each, could 
find flock aud feather to amuse them till dinner, with rock- 
eters and warm corners enough to content the most insa- 
tiate of knickerbockered gunners. The stud was superb ; 
the cook, a French artist of consummate genius, who had 
a brougham to his own use, and wore diamonds or the first 
water ; in the broad beech-studded grassy lands no lesser 
thing than doe and deer ever swept through the thickferns 
in the sunlight and the shadow ; a retinue of powdered 
servants filled the old halls, and guests of highest degree 
dined in its stately banqueting-room, with its scarlet and 
gold, its Vandykes and its Vernets, and yet — there was 
terribly little money at Royallieu with it all. Its present 
luxury was purchased at the cost of the future, and the 
parasite of extravagance was constantly sapping, unseen, 
the gallant old Norman-planted oak of the family-tree. 
But then, who thought of that ? Nobody. It was the 
way of the House never to take count of the morrow. 

True, any one of them would have died a hundred 
5 * 


hi 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


deaths rather than have had one acre of the beautiful 
green diadem of woods felled by the axe of the timber 
contractor, or passed to the hands of a stranger ; but no 
one among them ever thought that this was the inevitable 
end to which they surely drifted with blind and unthinking 
improvidence. The old Yiscount, haughtiest of haughty 
nobles, would never abate one jot of his accustomed mag- 
nificence ; and his sons had but imbibed the teaching of 
all that surrounded them ; they did but do in manhood 
what they had been unconsciously moulded to do in boy- 
hood, when they were sent to Eton a£ ten with gold 
dressing-boxes to grace their Dame’s tables, embryo 
Dukes for their co-fags, and tastes that already knew to a 
nicety the worth of the champagnes at the Christopher. 
The old, old story — how it repeats itself 1 Boys grow up 
amid profuse prodigality, and are launched into a world 
where they can no more arrest themselves, than the 
feather-weight can pull in the lightning stride of the two- 
year old, who defies all check, and takes the flat as he 
chooses. They are brought up like young Dauphins, and 
tossed into the costly whirl to float as best they can — on 
nothing. Then, on the lives and deaths that follow ; on 
the graves where a dishonored alien lies forgotten by the 
dark Austrian lake-side, or under the monastic shadow of 
some crumbling Spanish crypt ; where a red cross chills 
the lonely traveler in the virgin solitudes of Amazonian 
forest aisles, or the wild scarlet creepers of Australia trail 
over a nameless mound above the trackless stretch of sun- 
warmed waters — then at them the world “shoots out its 
lips with scorn.” Not on them lies the blame. 

A wintry, watery sun was shining on the terraces as 
Lord Royallieu paced up and down the morning after the 
Grand Military ; his step and limbs excessively enfeebled, 
but the carriage of his head and the flash of his dark 
hawk’s eyes as proud and untamable as in his earliest 
years. He never left his own apartments ; and no one, 
save his favorite “little Berk,” ever went to him without 
his desire. He was too sensitive a man to thrust his age 
and ailing health in among the young leaders of fashion, 
the wild men of pleasure, the good wits and the good shots 
of his son's set ; he knew very well that his own day was 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


55 


past ; that they would have listened to him out of the pa- 
tience of courtesy, but that they would have wished him 
away as “no end of a bore.” He was too shrewd not to 
know this ; but he was too quickly galled ever to bear to 
have it recalled to him. 

He looked up suddenly and sharply : coming toward 
him he saw the figure of the Guardsman. For “ Beauty ” 
the Viscount had no love ; indeed, well-nigh a hatred, for 
a reason never guessed by others, and never betrayed by 
him. 

Bertie was not like the Royallieu race ; he resembled 
his mother’s family. She, a beautiful and fragile creature 
whom her second son had loved, for the first years of his 
life, as he would have thought it now impossible that he 
could love any one, had married the Viscount with no 
affection toward him, while he had adored her with a 
fierce and jealous passion that her indifference only in- 
flamed. Throughout her married life, however, she had 
striven to render loyalty and tenderness toward a lord into 
whose arms she had been thrown, trembling and reluctant; 
of his wife’s fidelity he could not entertain a doubt, though 
that he had never won her heart he could not choose but 
know. He knew more, too ; for she had told it him with 
a noble candor before he wedded her ; knew that the man 
she did love was a penniless cousin, a cavalry officer, who 
had made a famous name among the wild mountain tribes 
of Northern India. This cousin, Alan Bertie — a fearless 
and chivalrous soldier, fitter for the days of knighthood 
than for these — had seen Lady Royallieu at Nice, some 
three years after her marriage ; accident had thrown them 
across each other’s path ; the old love, stronger, perhaps, 
now than it had ever been, had made him linger in her 
presence — had made her shrink from sending him to exile. 
Evil tongues at last had united their names together; 
Alan Bertie had left the woman he idolized lest slander 
should touch her through him, and fallen two years later 
under the dark dank forests on the desolate moorside of 
the hills of Hindostan, where long before he had rendered 
“ Bertie’s Horse ” the most famous of all the wild Irregu- 
lars of the East. 

After her death, Lord Royallieu found Alan’s miniature 


56 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


among her papers, and recalled those winter months by 
the Mediterranean till he cherished, with the fierce, eager, 
self-torture of a jealous nature, doubts and suspicions 
that, during her life, one glance from her eyes would have 
disarmed and abashed. Her second and favorite child 
bore her family name — her late lover’s name ; and, in re- 
sembling her race, resembled the dead soldier. It was 
sufficient to make him hate Bertie with a cruel and savage 
detestation, which he strove indeed to temper, for he 
was by nature a just man, and, in his better moments, 
knew that his doubts wronged both the living and the 
dead ; but which colored, too strongly to be dissembled, 
all his feelings and his actions toward his son, and might 
both have soured and wounded any temperament less non- 
chalantly gentle and supremely careless than Cecil’s. 

As it was, Bertie was sometimes surprised at his father’s 
dislike to him, but never thought much about it, and at- 
tributed it, when he did think of it, to the caprices of a 
tyrannous old man. To be jealous of the favor shown to 
his boyish brother could never for a moment have come 
into his imagination. Lady Royallieu with her last words 
had left the little fellow, a child of three years old, to the 
affection and the care of Bertie — himself then a boy of 
twelve or fourteen — and little as he thought of such things 
now, the trust of his dying mother had never been wholly 
forgotten. 

A heavy gloom came now over the Yiscount’s still hand- 
some aquiline, saturnine face, as his second son approached 
up the terrace ; Bertie was too like the cavalry soldier 
whose form he had last seen standing against the rose 
light of a Mediterranean sunset. The soldier had been 
dead eight-and-twenty years ; but the jealous hate was not 
dead yet. 

Cecil took off his hunting-cap with a courtesy that sat 
very well on his habitual languid nonchalance ; he never 
called his father anything but “Royal;” rarely saw, still 
less rarely consulted him, and cared not a straw for his 
censure or opinion ; but he was too thoroughbred by na- 
ture to be able to follow the underbred indecorum of the 
day which makes disrespect to old age the fashion. “You 
sent for me ?” he asked, taking the cigarette out of his 
mouth. 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


51 


“No, sir,” answered the old lord, curtly, “I sent for 
your brother. The fools can’t take even a message right 
now, it seems.” 

“ Shouldn’t have named us so near alike ; it’s often a 
bore I” said Bertie. 

“ I didn’t name you, sir; your mother named you,” an- 
swered his father, sharply ; the subject irritated him. 

“ It’s of no consequence which 1” murmured Cecil, with 
an expostulatory wave of his* cigar. “We’re not even 
asked whether we like to come into the world ; we can’t 
expect to be asked what we like to be called in it. Good 
day to you, sir.” 

lie turned to move away to the house ; but his father 
stopped him ; he knew that be had been discourteous — a far 
worse crime in Lord Royallieu’s eyes than to be heartless. 

“ So you won the Yase yesterday ?” he asked, pausing in 
his walk with his back bowed, but his stern, silver-haired 
head erect. 

“1 didn’t ; — the King did.” 

“ That’s absurd, sir,” said the Viscount, in his resonant 
and yet melodious voice. “ The finest horse in the world 
may have his back broke by bad riding, and a screw has 
won before now when it’s been finely handled. The finish 
was tight, wasn’t it ?” 

“Well — rather. I have ridden closer spins, though. 
The fallows were light.” 

Lord Royallieu smiled grimly. 

“ I know what the Shire ‘ plow ’ is like,” he said, with 
a flash of his falcon eyes over the landscape, w r here, in the 
days of his youth, he had led the first flight so often, 
George Rex, and Waterford, and the Berkeleys, and the 
rest following the rally of his hunting-horn. “You won 
much in bets ?” 

“ Very fair. Thanks.” 

“And won’t a shilling richer for it this day next 
week!” retorted the Viscount, with a rasping, grating 
irony; he could not help darting savage thrusts at this 
man who looked at him with eyes so cruelly like Alan 
Bertie’s. “ You play 5 l. points, and lay 500/. on the odd 
trick, I’ve heard, at your whist in the Ciubs — pretty prices 
for a younger son 1” 


58 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Never bet on the odd trick; spoils the game; makes 
you sacrifice play to the trick. We always bet on the 
game, ” said Cecil, with gentle weariness; the sweetness of 
his temper was proof against his father’s attacks upon his 
patience. 

“ No matter what you bet, sir ; you live as if you were 
a Rothschild while you are a beggar ?” 

“Wish I were a beggar : fellows always have no end in 
stock, they say; and your tailor can’t worry you very much 
when all you have to think about is an artistic arrange- 
ment of tatters 1” murmured Bertie, whose impenetrable 
serenity was never to be ruffled by his father’s bitterness. 

“You will soon have your wish, then,” retorted the 
Yiscount, with the unprovoked and reasonless passion 
which he vented on every one, but on none so much as the 
son he hated. “ You are on a royal road to it. I live 
out of the world, but I hear from it, sir. I hear that there 
is not a man in the Guards — not even Lord Rockingham— 
who lives at the rate of imprudence you do; that there is 
not a man who drives such costly horses, keeps such costly 
mistresses, games to such desperation, fools gold away 
with such idiocy as you do. You conduct yourself as if 
you were a millionaire, sir, and what are you ? A pauper 
on my bounty, and on your brother Montagu’s after me — 
a pauper with a tinsel fashion, a gilded beggary, a QueePn’s 
commission to cover a sold-out poverty, a dandy’s reputa- 
tion to stave off a defaulter’s future ! A pauper, sir — and 
a Guardsman 1” 

The coarse and cruel irony flashed out with wicked 
scorching malignity, lashing and upbraiding the man who 
was the victim of his own unwisdom and extravagance. 

A slight tinge of color came on his son’s face as he 
heard ; but he gave no sign that he was moved, no sign 
of impatience or anger. He lifted his cap again, nothin 
irony, but with a grave respect in his action that was totally 
contrary to his whole temperament. 

“ This sort of talk is very exhausting, very bad style,” 
he said, with his accustomed gentle murmur. “I will bid 
you good morning, my lord.” 

And he went without another word. Crossing the 
length of the old-fashioned Elizabethan terrace, little Berk 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


59 


passed him ; he motioned the lad toward the Viscount. 
“ Royal wants to see you, young one.” 

The boy nodded and went onward ; and as Bertie turned 
to enter the low door that led out to the stables he saw 
his father meet the lad — meet him with a smile that changed 
the whole character of his face, and pleasant kindly words 
of affectionate welcome, drawing his arm about Berkeley’s 
shoulder, and looking with pride upon his bright and gra- 
cious youth. 

More than an old man’s preference would be thus won 
by the young one ; a considerable portion of their mother’s 
fortune, so left that it could not be dissipated, yet could 
be willed to which son the Viscount chose, would go to 
his brother by this passionate partiality; but there was 
not a tinge of jealousy in Cecil ; whatever else his faults 
he had no mean ones, and the boy was dear to him, by a 
quite unconscious yet unvarying obedience to his dead 
mother’s wish. 

“ Royal hates me as game-birds hate a red dog. Why 
the deuce, I wonder ?” he thought, with a certain slight 
touch of pain despite his idle philosophies and devil-may- 
care indifference. “Well — I am good for nothing, I sup- 
pose. Certainly I am not good for much, unless it’s riding 
and making love.” 

With which summary of his merits, “ Beauty,” who felt 
himself to be a master in those two arts, but thought him- 
self a bad fellow out of them, sauntered away to join the 
Seraph and the rest of his guests. His father’s words 
pursuing him a little despite his carelessness, for they had 
borne an unwelcome measure of truth. 

“Royal can hit hard,” his thoughts continued. “A 
pauper and a Guardsman ! By Jove 1 it’s true enough; 
but he made me so. They* brought me up as if I had a 
million coming to me, and turned me out among the cracks 
to take n*y running with the best of them ; — and they give 
me just about what pays my groom’s book ! Then they 
wonder that a fellow goes to the Jews. Where the deuce 
else can he go ?” 

And Bertie, whom his gains the day before had not much 
benefited, since his play-debts, his young brother’s needs, 
and the Zu-Zu’s insatiate little hands were all stretched 


60 


TJNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ready to devour them without leaving a sovereign for more 
serious liabilities, went, for it was quite early morning, to 
act the M.F.H. in his father’s stead at the meet on the 
great lawns before the house, for the Royallieu “ lady- 
pack ” were very famous in the Shires, and hunted over 
the same country alternate days with the Quorn. They 
moved off ere long to draw the Holt Wood, in as open a 
morning, and as strong a scenting wind as ever favored 
Melton Pink. 

A whimper and “gone away !” soon echoed from Beeby- 
side, and the pack, not letting the fox hang a second, 
dashed after him, making straight for Scraptoft. One of 
the fastest things up-wind that hounds ever ran took them 
straight through the Spinnies, past Hamilton Farm, away 
beyond Burkby village, and down into the valley of the 
Wreake without a check, where he broke away, was headed, 
tried earths, and was pulled down scarce forty minutes 
from the find. The pack then drew Hungerton foxholes 
blank, drew Carver’s spinnies without a whimper ; and 
lastly, drawing the old familiar Billesden Coplow, had a 
short quick burst with a brace of cubs, and returning, set- 
tled themselves to a fine dog fox that was raced an liour- 
and-half, hunted slowly for fifty minutes, raced again an- 
other hour-and-quarter, sending all the field to their 
“second horses;” and after a clipping chase through the 
cream of the grass country, nearly saved his brush in the 
twilight when scent was lost in a rushing hailstorm, but 
had the “ little ladies ” laid on again like wildfire, and was 
killed with the “who-whoop 1” ringing far and away over 
Glenn Gorse, after a glorious run — thirty miles in and out 
— with pace that tried the best of them. 

A better day’s sport even the Quorn had never had in 
all its brilliant annals, and faster things the Melton men 
themselves had never wanted : both those who love the 
“ quickest thing you ever knew — thirty minutes<without a 
check — such a pace 1” and care little whether th q finale 
be “killed ” or “ broke away,” and those of older fashion, 
who prefer “ long day, you know, steady as old time, the 
beauties stuck like wax through fourteen parishes as I live ; 
six hours if it were a minute ; horses dead beat ; posi- 
tively walked, you know, no end of a day I” but must hav? 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


61 


the fatal “ who-whoop ” as conclusion — both of these, the 
“ new style and the old,” could not but be content with 
the doings of the “Demoiselles” from start to finish. 

Was it likely that Cecil remembered the caustic lash o.* 
his father’s ironies while he was lifting Mother of Pearl 
over the posts and rails, and sweeping on, with the halloo 
ringing down the wintry wind as the grasslands flew be- 
neath him? Was it likely that he recollected the d ffi- 
culties that hung above him while he was dashing down 
the Gorse happy as a king, with the wild hail driving in his 
face, and a break of stormy sunshine just welcoming the 
gallant few who were landed at the death, as twilight fell ? 
Was it likely that he could unlearn all the lessons of his 
life, and realize in how near a neighborhood he stood to 
ruin when he was drinking Regency sherry out of his gold 
flask as he crossed the saddle of his second horse, or, 
smoking, rode slowly homeward, chatting with the Seraph 
through the leafless muddy lanes in the gloaming ? 

Scarcely; — it is very easy to remember our difficulties 
when we are eating and drinking them, so to speak, in bad 
soups, and worse wines in continental impecuniosity, sleep- 
ing on them as rough Australian shake-downs, or wearing 
them perpetually in Californian rags and tatters, it were 
impossible very well to escape from them then ; but it is 
very hard to remember them when every touch and shape 
of life is pleasant to us — when everything about us is sym- 
bolical and redolent of wealth and ease — when the art of 
enjoyment is the only one we are called on to study, and 
the science of pleasure all we are asked to explore. 

It is well-nigh impossible to believe yourself a beggar 
while you never want sovereigns for whist ; and it would 
be beyond the powers of human nature to conceive your 
ruin irrevocable, while you still eat turbot and terrapin 
with a powdered giant behind your chair daily. Up in 
his garret a poor wretch knows very well what he is, and 
realizes in stern fact the extremities of the last sou, the 
last shirt, and the last hope ; but in these devil-may-care 
pleasures — in this pleasant, reckless, velvet-soft rush down- 
hill — in this club-palace, with every luxury that the heart 
of man can devise and desire, yours to command at your 

6 


62 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


will — it is hdrd work, then , to grasp the truth that the 
crossing sweeper yonder, in the dust of Pall Mall, is really 
not raoie utterly in the toils of poverty than you are ! 

“ Beauty ” was never, in the whole course of his days, 
virtually or physically, or even metaphorically, reminded 
that he was not a millionaire ; much less still was he ever 
reminded so painfully. 

Life petted him, pampered him, caressed him, gifted 
him, though of half his gifts he never made use ; lodged 
him like a prince, dined him like a king, and never recalled 
to him by a single privation or a single sensation that he 
was not as rich a man as his brother-in-arms, the Seraph, 
future Duke of Lyonnesse. How could he then bring him- 
self to understand, as nothing less than truth, the grim and 
cruel insult his father had flung at him in that brutally bit- 
ter phrase — “ A Pauper and a Guardsman?” If he had 
ever been near a comprehension of it, which he never was, 
he must have ceased to realize it when — pressed to dine 
with Lord Guenevcre near whose house the last fox had 
been killed, while a groom dashed over to Royallieu for 
his change of clothes — he caught a glimpse, as they passed 
through the hall, of the ladies taking their preprandial 
cups of tea in the library, an enchanting group of lace and 
silks, of delicate hue and scented hair, of blonde cheeks 
and brunette tresses, of dark velvets and gossamer tissue j 
and when he had changed the scarlet for dinner-dress, 
went down among them tq,be the darling of that charmed 
circle, to be smiled on and coquetted with by those soft, 
languid aristocrats, to be challenged by the lustrous eyes 
of his chatelaine and chere amie, to be spoiled as women 
will spoil the privileged pet of their drawing-rooms whom 
they have made “free of the guild,” and endowed with a 
flirting commission, and acquitted of anything “serious.” 

He was the recognized darling, and permitted property, 
of the young married beauties; the unwedded knew he 
was hopeless for them , and tacitly left him to the more at- 
tractive conquerors, who hardly prized the Seraph so much 
as they did Bertie, to sit in their barouches and opera 
boxes, ride and drive and yacht with them, conduct a Boc- 
caccio intrigue through the height of the season, and make 
them really believe themselves actually in love while they 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


63 


were at the moors or down the Nile, and would have given 
their diamonds to get a new distraction. 

Lady Guenevere was the last of these, his titled and 
wedded captors; and perhaps the most resistless of all of 
them. Neither of them believed very muen in their attach- 
ment, but both of them wore the masquerade dress to 
perfection. He had fallen in love with her as much as he 
ever fell in love, which was just sufficient to amuse him, 
and never enough to disturb him. He let himself be fas- 
cinated, not exerting himself either to resist or advance 
the affair till he was, perhaps, a little more entangled with 
her than it was according to his canons expedient to be ; 
and they had the most enchanting — friendship. 

Nobody was ever so indiscreet as to call it anything 
else ; and my Lord was too deeply absorbed in the Alder- 
ney beauties that stood knee-deep in the yellow straw of 
his farmyard, and the triumphant conquests that he gained 
over his brother peers’ Shorthorns and Suffolks, to trouble 
his head about Cecil’s attendance on his beautiful Coun- 
tess. 

They corresponded in Spanish; they had a thousand 
charming ciphers ; they made the columns of the Times 
and the Post play the unconscious role of medium to ap- 
pointments; they eclipsed all the pages of Calderon’s or 
Congreve’s comedies in the ingenuities with which they 
met, wrote, got invitations together to the same houses, 
and arranged signals for mute communication: but there 
was not the slightest occasion for it all. It passed the 
time, however, and went far to persuade them that they 
really were in love, and had a mountain of difficulties and 
dangers to contend with; it added the “spice to the sauce,” 
and gave them the “relish of being forbidden.” Besides, 
an open scandal would have been very shocking to her 
brilliant ladyship, and there was nothing on earth, per- 
haps, of which he would have had a more lively dread than 
a “scene;” but his present “friendship” was delightful, 
and presented no such dangers, while his fair “friend” was 
one of the greatest beauties and the greatest coquettes of 
her time. Her smile was honor ; her fan was a scepter ; 
her face was perfect ; and her heart never troubled herself 
or her lovers : if she had a fault, she was a trifle exact 


64 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ing, bat that was not to be wondered at in one so omnipo- 
tent, and her chains after all were made of roses. 

As she sat in the deep ruddy glow of the library fire, 
with the light flickering on her white brow and her violet 
velvets ; as she floated to the head of her table, with opals 
shining among her priceless point laces, and some tropical 
flower with leaves of glistening gold crowning her bronze 
hair ; as she glided down in a waltz along the polished 
floor, or bent her proud head over ecarte in a musing grace 
that made her opponent utterly forget to mark the king or 
even play his cards at all ; as she talked in the low music 
of her voice of European imbrogli, and consols and coupons, 
for she was a politician and a speculator, or lapsed into a 
beautifully tinted study of la femme incomprise, when 
time and scene suited, when the stars were very clear above 
the terraces without, and the conservatory very solitary, and 
a touch of Musset or Owen Meredith chimed in well with 
the light and shade of the oleanders and the brown luster 
of her own eloquent glance ; — in all these how superb she 
was t 

And if in truth her bosom only fell with the falling of 
Shares, and rose with the rising of Bonds ; if her soft 
shadows were only taken up like the purple tinting under 
her lashes to embellish her beauty ; if in her heart of 
hearts she thought Musset a fool, and wondered why 
Lucille was not written in prose, in her soul far prefer- 
ring Le Follet; why, — it did not matter that I can see. 
All great ladies gamble in stock nowadays under the 
rose, and women are for the most part as cold, clear, hard, 
and practical as their adorers believe them the contrary ; 
and a femme incomprise is so charming when she avows 
herself comprehended by you , that you would never risk 
spoiling the confidence by hinting a doubt of its truth. If 
she and Bertie only played at love ; if neither believed 
much in the other ; if each trifled with a pretty gossamer 
soufflet of passion much as they trifled with their soufifiets 
at dinner ; if both tried it to trifle away ennui much as 
they tried staking a Friederich d’Qr at Baden, this light 
surface fashionable philosophic form of a passion they 
both laughed at in its hot and serious follies, suited them 
admirably. Had it ever mingled a grain of bitterness in 


LOVE A LA MODE. 


65 


her ladyship’s Souchong before dinner, or given an aroma 
of bitterness to her lover’s Naples punch in the smoking- 
room, it would have been out of all keeping with them- 
selves and their world. 

Nothing on earth is so pleasant as being a little in love ; 
nothing on earth so destructive as being too much so ; 
and as Cecil in the idle enjoyment of the former gentle 
luxury flirted with his liege lady that night, lying back in 
the softest of lounging-chairs, with his dark, dreamy, hand- 
some eyes looking all the eloquence in the world, and his 
head drooped till his moustaches were almost touching her 
laces, his Queen of Beauty listened with charmed interest, 
and to look at him he might have been praying after the 
poet— — 

How is it under our control 
To love or not to love ? 

In real truth he was gently murmuring — • 

“ Such a pity that you missed to-day ! Hounds found 
directly ; three of the fastest things I ever knew, one after 
another; you should have seen the ‘little ladies’ head him 
just above the Gorse 1 Three hares crossed us and a fresh 
fox ; some of the pack broke away after the new scent, 
but old Bluebell, your pet, held on like death, and most of* 
them kept after her — you had your doubts about Silver 
Trumpet’s shoulders ; they’re not the thing, perhaps, but 
she ran beautifully all day, and didn’t show a symptom of 
rioting.” 

Cecil could, when needed, do the Musset and Meredith 
style of thing to perfection, but on the whole he preferred 
love & la mode ; it is so much easier and less exhausting 
to tell your mistress of a ringing run, or a close finish, 
than to turn perpetual periods .on the luster of her eyes, 
and the eternity of your devotion. 

Nor did it at all interfere with the sincerity of his wor- 
ship, that the Zu-Zu was at the prettiest little box in the 
world, in the neighborhood of Market Harborough, which 
he had taken for her, and had been at the meet that day in 
her little toy trap with its pair of snowy ponies and its 
bright blue liveries that drove so desperately through his 
finances, and had ridden his hunter Maraschino with im- 
E 6* 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CG 

mens? dash and spirit for a young lady, who had never 
done anything but pirouette till the last six months, and a 
total and headlong disregard of “ purlers,” very reckless 
in a white-skinned, bright-eyed, illiterate, avaricious little 
beauty, whose face was her fortune, and who most as- 
suredly would have been adored no single moment longer 
nad she scarred her fair tinted cheek with the blackthorn, 
or started as a heroine with a broken nose like Fielding’s 
cherished Amelia. The Zu-Zu might rage, might sulk, 
might pout, might even swear all sorts of naughty Mabille 
oaths, most villainously pronounced, at the ascendency of 
ner haughty unapproachable patrician rival ; — she did do 
all these things; — but Bertie would not have been the con- 
summate tactician, the perfect flirt, the skilled and steeled 
campaigner in the boudoirs that he was, if he had not 
been equal to the delicate task of managing both the 
peeress and the ballet-dancer with inimitable ability, even 
when they placed him in the seemingly difficult dilemma of 
meeting them both with twenty yards between them on the 
neutral ground of the gathering to see the Pytchley or the 
Tailby throw off — a task he had achieved with victorious 
brilliance more than once already this season. 

“You drive a team, Beauty — never drive a team,” the 
‘Seraph had said on occasion over a confidential “ sherry- 
peg” in the mornings, meaning by the metaphor of a team 
Lady Guenevere, the Zu-Zu, and various other contempora- 
ries in Bertie’s affections. “Nothing on earth so danger- 
ous ; your leader will bolt, or your off-wheeler will turn 
sulky, or your young one will passage and make the very 
deuce of a row ; they’ll never go quiet till the end, how- 
ever clever your hand is on the ribbons. Now, I’ll drive 
six-in-hand as soon as any man, — drove a ten-hander last 
year in the Bois, — when the team comes out of the sta- 
bles ; but I’m hanged if I’d risk my neck with managing 
even a pair of women. Have one clean out of the shafts 
before you trot out another I” 

To which salutary advice Cecil only gave a laugh, going 
on his own ways with the “ team ” as before, to the despair 
of hisffidus Achates; the Seraph, being a quarry so inces- 
santly pursued by dowager-beaters, chaperone-keepers, and 
the whole hunt of the Matrimonial Pack, with those clever 


UNDER THE KEEPER’S TREE. 


67 


hounds Belle and Fashion ever leading in full cry after 
him, that he dreaded the sight of a ball-room meet ; and, 
shunning the rich preserves of the Salons, ran to earth 
persistently in the shady Wood of St. John’s, and got — at 
some little cost and some risk of trapping, it is true, but 
still efficiently — preserved from all other hunters or poach- 
ers by the lawless Robin Hoods aux yeux noirs of those 
welcome and familiar coverts. 


CHAPTER V. 

UNDER THE KEEPER’S TREE. 

“ You’re a lad o’ wax, my beauty 1” cried Mr. Rake, 
enthusiastically, surveying the hero of the Grand Military 
with adoring eyes as that celebrity, without a hair turned 
or a muscle swollen from his exploit, was having a dress- 
ing down after a gentle exercise. “You’ve pulled it olf, 
haven’t you ? You’ve cut the work out for ’em ! You’ve 
shown ’em what a luster is 1 Strike me a loser, but what 
a deal there is in blood. The littlest pippin that ever 
threw a leg across the pigskin knows that in the stables ; 
then why the dickens do the world run against such a plain 
fact out of itl” 

And Rake gazed with worship at the symmetrical limbs 
of the champion of the “ First Life,” and plunged into 
speculation on the democratic tendencies of the age as 
clearly contradicted by all the evidences of the flat and 
furrow, while Forest King drank a dozen go-downs of wa- 
ter, and was rewarded for the patience with which he had 
subdued his inclination to kick, fret, spring, and break 
away throughout the dressing by a full feed thrown into 
his crib, which Rake watched him with adoring gaze eat 
to the very last grain. 

“ You precious one 1” soliloquized that philosopher, who 
loved tne horse with a sort of passion since his victory 
over the Shires. “ What a lot o’ enemies you’ve been and 


68 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


gone and made ! — that’s where it is, my boy; nobody can’t 
never forgive Success. All them fielders have lost such a 
sight of money by you ; them bookmakers have had such 
a lot of pots upset by you ; bless you ! if you were on the 
flat you’d be doctored or roped in no time. You’ve won 
for the gentlemen, my lovely — for your own cracks, my 
boy — and that’s just what they’ll never pardon you.” 

And Rake, rendered almost melancholy by his thoughts 
(he liked the “gentlemen” himself), went out of the box 
to get into saddle and ride off on an errand of his master’s 
to the Zu-Zu at her tiny hunting-lodge, where the snow- 
white ponies made her stud, and where she gave enchant- 
ing little hunting-dinners, at which she sang equally en- 
chanting little hunting-songs, and arrayed herself in the 
Fontainebleau hunting costume, gold-hilted knife and all, 
and spent Cecil’s winnings for him with a rapidity that 
threatened to leave very few of them for the London 
season. She was very pretty; sweetly pretty; with that 
wanted no gold powder, the clearest, sauciest eyes, and the 
handsomest mouth in the world; but of grammar she had 
not a notion, of her aspirates she had never a recollection, 
of conversation she had not an idea, of slang she had, to 
be sure, a repertoire , but to this was her command of lan- 
guage limited. She dressed perfectly, but she was a vul- 
gar little soul ; drank everything, from Bass’s ale to rum- 
punch, and from cherry-brandy to absinthe; thought it 
the height of wit to stifle you with cayenne slid into your 
vanille ice, and the climax of repartee to cram your hat 
full of peach stones and lobster shells; was thoroughly 
avaricious, thoroughly insatiate, thoroughly heartless, pil- 
laged with both hands, and then never had enough ; had a 
coarse good nature when it cost her nothing, and was “ as 
jolly as a grig,” according to her phraseology, so long as 
she could stew her pigeons in champagne, drink wines and 
liqueurs that were beyond price, take the most dashing 
trap in the Park up to Flirtation Corner, and laugh and 
sing and eat Richmond dinners, and show herself at the 
Opera with Bertie or some other “swell” attached to her, 
in the very box next to a Duchess. 

The Zu-Zu was perfectly happy; and as for the pa- 
thetic pictures that novelists and moralists draw, of vice 


UNDER THE KEEPER’S TREE. 


sighing amid turtle and truffles for childish innocence in 
the cottage at home where honeysuckles blossomed and 
brown brooks made melody, and passionately grieving on 
the purple cushions of a barouche for the time of straw 
pallets and untroubled sleep, why, — the Zu-Zu would have 
vaulted herself on the box-seat of a drag, and told you 
“to stow all that trash;” her childish recollections were 
of a stifling lean-to with the odor of pigsty and straw- 
yard, pork for a feast once a week, starvation all the other 
six days, kicks, slaps, wrangling, and a general atmosphere 
of beer and wash-tubs; she hated her past, and loved her 
cigar on the drag. The Zu-Zu is fact; the moralists’ 
pictures are moonshine. 

The Zu-Zu is an openly acknowledged fact, moreover, 
daily becoming more prominent in the world, more bril- 
liant, more frankly recognized, and more omnipotent. 
Whether this will ultimately prove for the better or the 
worse, it would be a bold man who should dare say; there 
Is at least one thing left to desire in it — i.e. that the syno- 
oym of “Aspasia,” which serves so often to designate in 
Journalistic literature these Free Lances of life, were more 
suitable in artistic and intellectual similarity, and that 
when the Zu-Zu and her sisterhood plunge their white 
arms elbow-deep into so many fortunes, and rule the world 
right and left as they do, they could also sound their II’s 
properly, and know a little orthography, if they could not 
be changed into such queens of grace, of intellect, of sov- 
ereign mind and splendid wit as were their prototypes 
when she whose name they debase held her rule in the City 
of the Violet Crown, and gathered about her Phidias the 
divine, haughty and eloquent Antipho, the gay Crates, the 
subtle Protagorus, Cratinus so acrid and yet so jovial, Da- 
mon of the silver lyre, and the great poets who are poets 
for all time. Author and artist,' noble and soldier, court 
the Zu-Zu order now as the Athenians courted their bril- 
liant iraipai ; but it must be confessed that the Hellenic 
idols were of a more exalted type than are the Hyde Park 
goddesses ! 

However, the Zu-Zu was the rage, and spent Bertie’s 
money when he got any just as her willful sovereignty fan- 
cied, and Rake rode on now with his master’s note, bear- 


*10 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ing no very good will to her; for Rake had very strong 
prejudices, and none stronger than against these fair pil- 
lagers who went about seeking whom they should devour, 
and laughing at the wholesale ruin that they wrought 
while the sentimentalists babbled in "Social Science ” of 
" pearls lost” and "innocence betrayed.” 

"A girl that used to eat tripe and red herring in a six- 
pair back, and dance for a shilling a night in gauze, com- 
ing it so grand that she’ll only eat asparagus in March, 
and drink the best Brands with her truffles ! Why, she 
ain’t worth sixpence thrown away on her, unless its worth 
while to hear how hard she can swear at you !” averred 
Rake, in his eloquence ; and he was undoubtedly right for 
that matter ; but then — the Zu-Zu was the rage, and if 
ever she should be sold up, great ladies would crowd to her 
sale and buy with eager curiosity at high prices her most 
trumpery pots of pomatum, her most flimsy gew-gaws of 
marqueterie 1 

Rake had seen a good deal of men and manners, and, in 
his own opinion at least, was " up to every dodge on the 
cross ” that this iniquitous world could unfold. A bright, 
lithe, animated, vigorous, yellow-haired, and sturdy fellow, 
seemingly with a dash of the Celt in him that made him 
vivacious and peppery, Mr. Rake polished his wits quite 
as much as he polished the tops, and considered himself a 
philosopher. Of whose son he was he had not the re- 
motest idea ; his earliest recollections were of the tender 
mercies of the workhouse ; but even that chill foster- 
mother, the parish, had not damped the liveliness of his 
temper or the independence of his opinions, and as soon 
as he was fifteen Rake had run away and joined a circus, 
distinguishing himself there by his genius for standing on 
his head and tying his limbs into a porter’s knot. 

From the circus he migrated successively into the shape 
of a comic singer, a tapster, a navvy, a bill-sticker, a gua- 
eho in Mexico (working his passage out), a fireman in New 
York, a ventriloquist in Maryland, a vaquero in Spanish 
California, a lemonade-seller in San Francisco, a revolu- 
tionist in the Argentine (without the most distant idea 
what he fought for), a boatman on the Bay of Mapiri, a 
blacksmith in Santarem, a trapper in the Wilderness, and 


UNDER THE KEEPER’S TREE. 


71 


finally, working his passage home again, took the Queen’s 
shilling in Dublin, and was drafted into a light-cavalry 
regiment. With the — th he served half a dozen years in 
India, a rough-rider, a splendid fellow in a charge or a 
pursuit, with an astonishing power over horses, and the 
clearest back-handed sweep of a saber that ever cut down 
a knot of natives ; but — insubordinate. Do his duty when- 
ever fighting was in question, he did most zealously; but 
to kick over the traces at other times was a temptation 
that at last became too strong for that lawless lover of 
liberty. 

From the moment that he joined the regiment, a certain 
Corporal Warne and he had conceived an antipathy to one 
another, which Rake had to control as he might, and 
which the Corporal was not above indulging in every petty 
piece of tyranny that his rank allowed him to exercise. 
On active service Rake was, by instinct, too good a sol- 
dier not to manage to keep the curb on himself tolerably 
well, though he was always regarded in his troop rather 
as a hound that will “ riot ” is regarded in the pack ; but 
when the — th came back to Brighton and to barracks, the 
evil spirit of rebellion began to get a little hotter in him 
under the Corporal’s “ Idees Napoliennes” of justifiable 
persecution. Warne indisputably provoked his man in a 
cold, iron, strictly lawful sort of manner, moreover, all the 
more irritating to a temper like Rake’s. 

“ Ilauged if I care how the officers come it over me ; 
they’re gentlemen, and it don’t try a fellow,” would Rake 
say in confidential moments over purl and a penn’orth of 
bird’s-eye, his experience in the Argentine Republic hav- 
ing left him with strongly aristocratic prejudices; “but 
when it comes to a duffer like that, that knows no better 
than me, what ain't a bit better than me, and what is as 
clumsy a duffer about a horse’s plates as ever I knew, and 
would a’most let a young ’un buck him out of his saddle, 
why then I do cut up rough, I ain’t denying it, and I don’t 
see what there is in his Stripes to give him such a license 
to be aggravating.” 

With which Rake would blow the froth off his pewter 
with a puff of concentrated wrath, and an oath against his 
non-commissioned officers that might have let some light 


72 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


in upon the advocates for " promotion from the ranks '* 
had they been there to take the lesson. At last, in the 
leisure of Brighton, the storm broke. Rake had a Scotch 
hound that was the pride of his life, his beer-money often 
going instead to buy dainties for the dog, who became one 
of the channels through which Warne could annoy and 
thwart him. The dog did no harm, being a line, well-bred 
deerhound; but it pleased the Corporal to consider that 
it did, simply because it belonged to Rake, whose popu- 
larity in the corps, owing to his good nature, his good 
spirits, and his innumerable tales of American experiences 
and amorous adventures, increased the jealous dislike which 
his knack with an unbroken colt and his abundant stable 
science had first raised in his superior. 

One day in the chargers’ stables the hound ran out of a 
loose box with a rush to get at Rake, and upset a pailful 
of warm mash. The Corporal, who was standing by in 
harness, hit him over the head with a heavy whip he had 
in his hand ; infuriated by the pain, the dog flew at him, 
tearing his overalls with a fierce crunch of his teeth. 
“ Take the brute off, and string him up with a halter ; I’ve 
put up with him too long !” cried Warne to a couple of 
privates working near in their stable dress. Before the 
words were out of his mouth, Rake threw himself on him 
with a bound like lightning, and, wrenching the whip out 
of his hands struck .him a slashing, stinging blow across 
his face. 

“ Hang my hound, you cur 1 If you touch a hair of 
him .I’ll double-thong you within an inch of your life 1” 

And assuredly he would have kept his word had he not 
been made a prisoner and marched off to the guard-room. 

Rake learnt the stern necessity of the law, which, for 
the sake of morale , must make the soldiers, whose blood 
is wanted to be like fire on the field, patient, pulseless, and 
enduring of every provocation, cruelty, and insolence in 
the camp and the barrack, as though they were statues of 
stones, — a needful law, a wise law, an indispensable law, 
doubtless, but a very hard law to be obeyed by a man full 
of life and all life’s passions. 

At the court-martial on his mutinous conduct, which fol- 
lowed, many witnesses brought evidence, on being pressed. 


UNDER THE KEEPER^ TREE. 73 

to the unpopularity of Warne in the regiment, and to his 
harshness and his tyranny to Hake. Many men spoke out 
what had been chained down in their thoughts for years; 
and, in consideration of the provocation received, the pris 
oner, who was much liked by the officers, was condemned to 
six months’ imprisonment for his insubordination and blow 
to his superior officer, without being tied up to the triangles. 
At the court-martial, Cecil, who chanced to be in Brighton 
after Goodwood, was present one day with some other 
Guardsmen, and the look of Rake, with his cheerfulness 
under difficulties, his love for the hound, and his bright, 
sunburnt, shrewd, humorous countenance, took his fancy. 

“Beauty ’’was the essence of good nature. Indolent 
himself, he hated to see anything or anybody worried ; lazy, 
gentle, wayward, and spoilt by his own world, he was still 
never so selfish and philosophic as he pretended but what 
he would do a kindness if one came in his way ; it is not a 
very great virtue, perhaps, but it is a rare one. 

“ Poor devil I struck the other because he wouldn’t have 
his dog hanged. Well, on my word I should have done 
the same in his place, if I could have got up the pace for 
so much exertion,” murmured Cecil to his cheroot, care- 
less of the demoralizing tendency of his remarks for the 
army in general. Had it occurred in the Guards, and he 
had “sat” on the case, Rake would have had one very 
lenient judge. 

As it was, Bertie actually went the lengths of thinking 
seriously about the matter ; he liked Rake’s devotion to 
his dumb friend, and he heard of his intense popularity in 
his troop ; he wished to save, if he could, so fine a fellow 
from the risks of his turbulent passion, and from the stern 
fetters of a trying discipline ; hence, when Rake found 
himself condemned to his cell, he had a message sent him 
by Bertie’s groom that when his term of punishment should 
be over, Mr. Cecil would buy his discharge from the Ser- 
vice and engage him as extra body-servant, having had a 
good account of his capabilities ; he had taken the hound 
to his own kennels. 

Now, the fellow had been thoroughly devil-me-care 
throughout the whole course of the proceedings, had heard 
his sentence with sublime impudence, and had chaffed his 

7 


74 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


sentinels with an utterly reckless nonchalance ; but some* 
how or other, when that message reached him, a vivid 
sense that he was a condemned and disgraced man sud- 
denly flooded in on him ; a passionate gratitude seized 
him to the young aristocrat who had thought of him in 
his destitution and condemnation, who had even thought 
of his dog ; and Rake, the philosophic and the undannta- 
ble, could have found it in his heart to kneel down in the 
dust and kiss the stirrup-leather when he held it for his 
new master, so strong was the loyalty he bore from that 
moment to Bertie. 

Martinets were scandalized at a Life-Guardsman taking 
as his private valet a man who had been guilty of such 
conduct in the Light Cavalry ; but Cecil never troubled 
his head about what people said ; and so invaluable did 
Rake speedily become to him, that he had kept him about 
his person wherever he went from then until now, two years 
after. 

Rake loved his master with a fidelity very rare in these 
days ; he loved his horses, his dogs, everything that was 
his, down to his very rifle and boots, slaved for him cheer- 
fully, and was as proud of the deer he stalked, of the brace 
he bagged, of his winnings when the Household played 
the Zingari, or his victory when his yacht won the Cher- 
bourg Cup, as though those successes had been Rake’s own. 

“ My dear Seraph,” said Cecil himself once on this point 
to the Marquis, “ if you want generosity, fidelity, and all 
the rest of the cardinal what-d’ye-call-ems — sins, ain’t it ? 
— go to a noble-hearted Scamp ; Tie’ll stick to you till he 
kills himself. If you want to be cheated, get a Respecta- 
ble Immaculate ; Tie’ll swindle you piously, and decamp 
with your Doncaster Vase.” 

And Rake, who assuredly had -been an out-and-out 
scamp, made good Bertie’s creed ; he “ stuck to him ” de- 
voutly, and no terrier was ever more alive to an otter than 
he was to the Guardsman’s interests. It was that very 
vigilance which made him, as he rode back from the Zu- 
Zu’s in the twilight, notice what would have escaped any 
save one who had been practiced as a trapper in the red 
Canadian woods, namely, the head of a man almost hidden 
among the heavy though leafless brushwood and the yel- 


UNDER THE KEEPER’S TREE. 


75 

low gorse of a spinney which lay on his left in Royallieu 
Park. Rake’s eyes were telescopic and microscopic ; more- 
over, they had been trained to know such little signs as a 
marsh from a hen harrier in full flight, by the length of 
wing and tail, and a widgeon or a coot from a mallard or 
a teal, by the depth each swam out of the water. Gray 
and foggy as it was, and high as was the gorse, Rake 
recognized his born-foe Willon. 

“ What’s he up to there ?” thought Rake, surveying the 
place, which was wild, solitary, and an unlikely place 
enough for a head groom to be found in. “If he ain’t a 
rascal, I never see one ; it’s my belief he cheats the sta- 
ble thick and thin, and gets on Mr. Cecil’s mounts to a 
good tune — ay, and would nobble ’em as soon as not, if it 
just suited his book; that blessed King hates the man; 
how he lashes his heels at him 1” 

It was certainly possible that Willon might be passing 
an idle hour in potting rabbits, or be otherwise innocently 
engaged enough; but the sight of him there among the 
gorse was a sight of suspicion to Rake. Instantaneous 
thoughts darted through his mind of tethering his horse, 
and making a reconnoissance safely and unseen with the 
science at stalking brute or man that he had learnt of his 
friends the Sioux. But second thoughts showed him this 
was impossible. The horse he was on was a mere colt just 
breaking in, who had barely had so much as a “dumb 
jockey” on his back, and stand for a second the colt would 
not. 

“At any rate, I’ll unearth him,” thought Rake, with his 
latent animosity to the head groom, and his vigilant loy- 
alty to Cecil overruling any scruple as to his right to over- 
look his foe’s movements ; and with a gallop that was muf- 
fled on the heather’d turf he dashed straight at the covert 
unperceived till he was within ten paces. Willon started 
and looked up hastily; he was talking to a square-built 
man very quietly dressed in shepherds’ plaid, chiefly re- 
markable by a red-hued beard and whiskers. 

The groom turned pale, and laughed nervously as Rake 
pulled up with a jerk. 

“You on that young ’un again ? Take care you don’: 
get bucked out o’ saddle in the shape of a cocked-hat ” 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


76 


6 1 ain’t afraid of going to grass, if you are !” retorted 
Hake, scornfully; boldness was not his enemy’s strong 
point. “ Who’s your pal, old fellow ?” 

“A cousin o’ mine, out o’ Yorkshire,” vouchsafed Mr. 
Willou, looking anything but easy, while the cousin afore- 
said nodded sulkily on the introduction. 

“Ah ! looks like a Yorkshire tyke,” muttered Rake, 
with a volume of meaning condensed in these innocent 
words. “A nice, dry, cheerful sort of place to meet your 
cousin in, too ; uncommon lively ; hope it’ll raise his spirits 
to see all liis cousins a grinning there ; his spirits don’t 
seem much in sorts now,” continued the ruthless inquis- 
itor, with a glance at the “ keeper’s tree ” by which they 
stood, in the middle of dank undergrowth, whose branches 
were adorned with dead cats, curs, owls, kestrels, stoats, 
weasels, and martens. To what issue the passage of arms 
might have come it is impossible to say, for at that mo- 
ment the colt took matters into his own hands, and bolted 
with a rush, that even Rake could not pull in till he had 
had a mile-long “pipe opener.” 

“ Something up there,” thought that sagacious rough- 
rider; “if that red-haired chap ain’t a rum lot, I’ll eat 
him. I’ve seen his face, too, somewhere ; where the deuce 
was it ? Cousin ; yes, cousins in Queer Street, I dare say ! 
Why should he go and meet his 4 cousin ’ out in the fog 
there, when if you took twenty cousins home to the ser- 
vants’ hall nobody’d ever say anything ? If that Willon 
ain’t as deep as Old Harry ” 

And Rake rode into the stable-yard, thoughtful and in- 
tensely suspicious of the rendezvous under the keeper’s 
tree in the outlying coverts. He would have been more 
so had he guessed that Ben Davis’s red beard and demure 
attire, with other as efficient disguises, had prevented even 
his own keen eyes from penetrating the identity of Willon’s 
“cousin” with the Welcher he had seen thrust off the 
course the day before by his master. 


THE END OF A RINGING RUN. 


77 


CHAPTER VI. 

THE END OF A RINGING RUN. 

44 Tally-ho ! is the word, clap spurs and let’s follow, 

The world has no charm like a rattling view-halloa I” 

is hardly to be denied by anybody in this land of fast 
barsts and gallant M.F.H.s, whether they “ride to hunt,” 
or “ hunt to ride,” in the immortal distinction of Assheton 
Smith’s old whip : the latter class, by-the-by, becoming 
far and away the larger, in these days of rattling gallops 
and desperate breathers. Who cares to patter after a sly 
old dog-fox, that, fat and wary, leads the pack a tedious 
interminable wind in and out through gorse and *spinney, 
bricks himself up in a drain, and takes an hour to be dug 
out, dodges about till twilight, and makes the hounds pick 
the scent slowly and wretchedly over marsh and through 
water ? Who would not give fifty guineas a second for 
the glorious thirty minutes of racing that show steam and 
steel over fence and fallow in a clipping rush without a 
check from find to finish ? So be it ever 1 The riding 
that graces the Shires, that makes Tedworth and Pytch- 
ley, the Duke’s and the Fitzwilliam’s, household words and 
“names beloved,” that fills Melton and Market Harbo- 
rough, and makes the best flirts of the ball-room gallop 
fifteen miles to covert, careless of hail or rain, mire or 
slush, mist or cold, so long as it is a fine scenting wind, is 
the same riding that sent the Six Hundred down into the 
blaze of the Muscovite guns, that in our father’s days gave 
to Grant’s Hussars their swoop, like eagles, on to the rear- 
guard at Morales, and that in the grand old East and the 
rich trackless West, makes exiled campaigners with high 
English names seek and win an aristeia of their own at 
the head of their wild Irregular Horse, who would charge 
bell itself at their bidding. 

Now in all the Service there was not a man who loved 
7 * 


78 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


hunting better than Bertie. Though he was incorrigibly 
lazy, and inconceivably effeminate in every One of his habits, 
though he suggested a portable lounging-chair as an im- 
provement at battues so that you might shoot sitting, 
drove to every breakfast and garden party in the season in 
his brougham with the blinds down lest a grain of dust 
should touch him, thought a waltz too exhaustive, and a 
saunter down Pall Mall too tiring, and asked to have the 
end of a novel told him in the clubs because it was too 
much trouble to read on a warm day, — though he was more 
indolent than any spoiled Creole, 14 Beauty” never failed to 
head the first flight, and adored a hard day cross country, 
with an east wind in his eyes and the sleet in his teeth. 
The only trouble was to make him get up in time for it. 

“Mr. Cecil, sir, if you please, the drag will be round in 
ten minutes, ” said' Rake, with a dash of desperation for 
the seventh time into his chamber, one fine scenting morn- 
ing. 

“ I don’t please,” answered Cecil, sleepily, finishing his 
cup of coffee, and reading a novel of La Demirep’s. 

“ The other gentlemen are all down, sir, and you will be 
too late.” 

“ Not a bit. They must wait for me,” yawned Bertie. 

Crash came the Seraph’s thunder on the panels of the 
door, and a strong volume of Turkish through the keyhole : 
“ Beauty, Beauty, are you dead ?” 

44 Now, what an inconsequent question I” expostulated 
Cecil, with appealing rebuke. “ If a fellow were dead, 
how the devil could he say he was ? Do be logical, Ser- 
aph.” 

“Get up 1” cried the Seraph with a deafening rataplan, 
and a final dash of his colossal stature into the chamber. 
“We’ve all done breakfast; the traps are coming round; 
you’ll be an hour behind time at the meet.” 

Bertie lifted his eyes with plaintive resignation from the 
Demirep’s yellow-papered romance. 

44 I’m really in an interesting chapter: Aglae has just 
had a marquis kill his son, and two brothers kill each other 
in the Bois, about her, and is on the point of discovering 
a mau she’s in love with to be her own grandfather; the 
complication is absolutely thrilling,” murmured Beauty, 


TELE END OF A RINGING RUN. 


79 

whom nothing could ever “thrill,” not even plunging 
down the Matterhorn, losing “ long odds in thou’ ” over 
the Oaks, or being sunned in the eyes of the fairest woman 
of Europe. 

The Seraph laughed, and tossed the volume straight to 
the other end of the chamber. 

“ Confound you, Beauty, get up !” 

“ Netfbr swear, Seraph, not ever so mildly,” yawned 
Cecil ; “ it’s gone out, you know ; ouly the cads and the 
clergy can damn one nowadays ; it’s such bad style to be 
so impulsive. Look 1 you have broken the back of my 
Demirep !” 

“You deserve to break the King’s back over the first 
cropper,” laughed the Seraph. “ Do get up !” 

“ Bother,” sighed the victim, raising himself with re- 
luctance, while the Seraph disappeared in a cloud of 
Turkish. 

Neither Bertie’s indolence nor his insouciance were 
assumed ; utter carelessness was his nature, utter impassa- 
bility was his habit, and he was truly for the moment loth 
to leave his bed, his coffee, and his novel ; he must have 
his leg over the saddle, and feel the strain on his arms of 
that “pulling” pace with which the King always went when 
once he settled into his stride, before he would really think 
about winning. 

The hunting breakfasts of our forefathers and of our 
present squires found no favor with Bertie ; a slice of game 
and a glass of Cura 9 oa were all he kept the drag waiting 
to swallow, and the four bays going at a pelting pace, he 
and the rest of the Household who were gathered at Roy- 
allieu were by good luck in time for the throw-off of the 
Quorn, where the hero of the Blue Ribbon was dancing 
impatiently under Willon’s hand, scenting the fresh, keen, 
sunny air, and knowing as well what all those bits of scarlet 
straying in through field and lane, gate and gap, meant, as 
well as though the merry notes of the master’s horn were 
winding over the gorse. The meet was brilliant and very 
large ; showing such a gathering as only the Melton coun- 
try can ; and foremost among the crowd of carriages, hacks, 
and hunters, were the beautiful roan mare Vivandihre of 
the Lady Guenevore, mounted by that exquisite peeress in 


80 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


her violet habit, and her tiny velvet hat ; and the pony 
equipage of the Zu-Zu, all glittering with azure and silver, 
leopard rugs, and snowy reins : the breadth of half an acre 
of grassland was between them, but the groups of men 
about them were tolerably equal for number and for rank. 

“ Take Zu-Zu off my hands for this morning, Seraph, 
there’s a good fellow,” murmured Cecil, as he swung him- 
self into saddle. The Seraph gave a leonine growl, sighed, 
and acquiesced. He detested women in the hunting-field, 
but that sweetest tempered giant of the Brigades never 
refused anything to anybody — much less to “Beauty.” 

To an uninitiated mind it would have seemed marvelous 
and beautiful in its combination of simplicity and intricacy, 
to have noted the delicate tactics with which Bertie con- 
ducted himself between his two claimants ; — bending to his 
Countess with a reverent devotion that assuaged whatever 
of incensed perception of her unacknowledged rival might 
be silently lurking in her proud heart ; wheeling up to the 
pony-trap under cover of speaking to the men from Egerton 
Lodge, and restoring the Zu-Zu from sulkiness, by a pro- 
pitiatory offer of a little gold sherry-flask, studded with 
torquoises, just ordered for her from Regent Street, which, 
however, she ungraciously contemned, because she thought 
it had only cost twenty guineas ; anchoring the victimized 
Seraph beside her by an adroit “Ah \ by-the-way, Rock, 
give Zu-Zu one of your rose-scented papelitos; she’s been 
wild to smoke them;” and leaving the Zu-Zu content at 
securing a future Duke, was free to canter back and flirt on 
the off-side of Vivandihre, till the “signal,” the “cast,” 
made with consummate craft, the waving of the white 
sterns among the brushwood, the tightening of girths, the 
throwing away of cigars, the challenge, the whimper, and 
the “ stole away !” sent the field headlong down the course 
after as fine a long-legged greyhound fox as ever carried a 
brush. 

Away he went in a rattling spin, breaking straight at 
once for the open, the hounds on the scent like mad : with 
a tally-ho that thundered through the cloudless, crisp, cold, 
glittering noon, the field dashed off pell-mell, the violet 
habit of her ladyship, and the azure-skirts of the Zu-Zu 
foremost of all in the rush through the spinneys ; while 


THE END OF A RINGING RUN. 


81 


Cecil on the King, and the Seraph on a magnificent white 
weight-carrier, as thoroughbred and colossal as himself, 
led the way with them. The scent was hot as death in the 
spinneys, and the pack raced till nothing but a good one 
could live with them ; few but good ones, however, were 
to be found with the Quorn, and the field held together 
superbly over the first fence, and on across the grassland, 
the game old fox giving no sign of going to covert, but 
running straight as a crow flies, while the pace grew ter- 
rific. 

“Beats cock-fighting I” cried the Zu-Zu, while her blue 
skirts fluttered in the wind, as she lifted Cecil’s brown 
mare, very cleverly, over a bilberry hedge, and set her 
little white teeth with a will on the Seraph’s otto-of-rose 
cigarette. Lady Guenevere heard the words as Vivan- 
diere rose in the air with the light bound of a roe, and a 
slight superb dash of scorn came into her haughty eyes for 
the moment ; she never seemed to know that “that person” 
in the azure habit even existed, but the contempt awoke in 
her, and shone in her glance, while she rode on as that fair 
leader of the Belvoir and Pytchley alone could ride over 
the fallows. 

The steam was on at full pressure, the hounds held close 
to his brush, heads up sterns down, running still straight 
as an arrow over the open, past coppice and covert, through 
gorse and spinney, without a sign of the fox making for 
shelter. Fence and double, hedge and brook, soon scat- 
tered the field ; straying off far and wide, and coming to 
grief with lots of “ downers,” it grew select, and few but 
the crack men could keep the hounds in view. “ Catch ’em 
who can,” was the one mot d’ordre, for they were literally 
racing, the line-hunters never losing the scent a second, as 
the fox, taking to dodging, made all the trouble he could 
for them through the rides of the woods. Their working 
was magnificent, and, heading him, they ran him round and 
round in a ring, viewed him for a second, and drove him 
out of covert once more into the pastures, while they laid 
on at a hotter scent and flew after him like staghounds. 

Only half a dozen were up with them now ; the pace was 
tremendous, though all over grass ; here a flight of posts 
and rails tried the muscle of the boldest j there a bullfinch 
F 


82 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


yawned behind the blackthorn ; here a big fence towered ; 
ther6 a brook rushed angrily among its rushes ; while the 
keen, easterly wind blew over the meadows, and the pack 
streamed along like the white trail of a plume. Cecil 
“showed the way” with the self-same stride and the self- 
same fencing as had won him the Yase. Lady Guenevere 
and the Seraph were running almost even with him ; three 
of the Household farther down ; the Zu-Zu and some Mel- 
ton men two meadows off ; the rest of the field, nowhere. 
Fifty-two minutes had gone by in that splendid running, 
without a single check, while the fox raced as gamely and 
as fast as at the find ; the speed was like lightning past the 
brown woods, the dark-green pine plantations, the hedges, 
bright with scarlet berries ; through the green low-lying 
grasslands, and the winding drives of coverts, and the boles 
of ash-hued beech trunks, whose roots the violets were just 
purpling with their blossom ; while far away stretched the 
blue haze of the distance, and above-head a flight of rooks 
cawed merrily in the bright air, soon left far off as the pack 
swept onward in the most brilliant thing of the hunting 
year. 

“ Water ! take care !” cried Cecil, with a warning wave 
of his hand as the hounds with a splash like a torrent 
dashed up to their necks in a broad brawling brook that 
Reynard had swam in first style, and struggled as best 
they could after him. It was an awkward bit, with bad 
taking-off and a villainous mud-bank for landing; and the 
water, thickened and swollen with recent rains, had made 
all the land that sloped to it miry and soft as sponge. It 
was the risk of life and limb to try it ; but all who still 
viewed the hounds, catching Bertie’s shout of warning, 
worked their horses up for it, and charged toward it as 
hotly as troops charge a square. Forest King was over 
like a bird ; the winner of the Grand Military was not to 
be daunted by all the puny streams of the Shires ; the art- 
istic riding of the Countess landed Vivandiere, with a 
beautiful clear spring, after him by a couple of lengths : 
the Seraph’s handsome white hunter, brought up at a 
headlong gallop with characteristic careless dash and fine 
science mingled, cleared it; but, falling with a mighty 
crash, gave him a purler on the opposite side, and was 


THE END OF A RINGING RUN. 


83 


within an ace of striking him dead with his hoof in frantic 
straggles to recover. The Seraph, however, was on his 
legs with a rapidity marvelous in a six-foot-three son of 
Anak, picked up the horse, threw himself into saddle, and 
dashed off again quick as lightning, with his scarlet stained 
all over, and his long fair moustaches floating in the wind. 
The Zu-Zu turned Mother of Pearl back with a fiery French 
oath; she hated to be “cut down,” but she liked still less 
to risk her neck ; and two of the Household were already 
treated to “crackers” that disabled them for the day, while 
one Melton man was pitched head-foremost into the brook, 
and another was sitting dolorously on the bank with his 
horse’s head in his lap, and the poor brute’s spine broken. 
There were only three of the first riders in England now 
alone with the hounds, who, with a cold scent as the fox 
led them through the angular corner of a thick pheasant 
covert, stuck like wax to the line, and working him out, 
viewed him once more, for one wild, breathless, tantalizing 
second, and, on a scent breast-high, raced him with the rush 
of an express through the straggling street of a little ham- 
let, and got him out again on the level pastures and across 
a fine line of hunting country, with the leafless woods and 
the low gates of a park far away to their westward. 

“A guinea to a shilling that we kill him,” cried the 
flute-voice of her brilliant ladyship, as she ran a moment 
side by side with Forest King, and flashed her rich eyes 
on his rider; she had scorned the Zu-Zu, but on occasion 
she would use betting slang and racing slang with the 
daintiest grace in the world herself without their polluting 
her lips. As though the old fox heard the wager, he swept 
in a bend round toward the woods on the right, making, 
with all the craft and the speed there were in him, for the 
deep shelter of the boxwood and laurel. “ After him, my 
beauties, my beauties — if he run there he’ll go to ground 
and save his brush 1” thundered the Seraph as though he 
were hunting his own hounds at Lyonnesse, who knew 
every tone of his rich clarion notes as well as they knew 
every wind of his horn. But the young ones of the pack 
saw Reynard’s move and his meaning as quickly as he 
did ; having run fast before, they flew now : the pace was 
terrific. Two fences were crossed as though they were 


84 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


paper ; the meadows raced with lightning speed, a ha-ha 
leaped, a gate cleared with a crashing jump, and in all the 
furious excitement of “view,” they tore down the mile- 
long length of an avenue, dashed into a flower-garden, and 
smashing through a gay trellis-work of scarlet creeper, 
plunged into the home-paddock and killed with as loud a 
shout ringing over the country in the bright sunny day as 
ever was echoed by the ringing cheers of the Shire ; Cecil, 
the Seraph, and her victorious ladyship alone coming in for 
the glories of the “finish.” 

“Never had a faster seventy minutes up-wind,” said 
Lady Guenevere, looking at the tiny jeweled watch, the 
size of a sixpence, that was set in the handle of her whip, 
as the brush, with all the compliments customary, was 
handed to her. She had won twenty before. 

The park, so unceremoniously entered, belonged to a 
baronet, who, though he hunted little himself, honored the 
sport and scorned a vulpecide ; he came out naturally and 
begged them to lunch. Lady Guenevere refused to dis- 
mount, but consented to take a biscuit and a little Lafitte, 
while clarets, liqueurs, and ales, with anything else they 
wanted, were brought to her companions. The stragglers 
strayed in; the M.F.H. came up just too late; the men 
getting down, gathered about the Countess or lounged on 
the gray stone steps of the Elizabethan house. The sun 
shone brightly on the oriole casements, the antique gables, 
the twisted chimneys, all covered with crimson parasites 
and trailing ivy; the horses, the scarlet, the pack in the 
paddock adjacent, the shrubberies of laurel and auraucaria, 
the sun-tinted terraces, made a bright and picturesque 
grouping. Bertie, with his hand on Vivandiere’s pommel, 
after taking a deep draught of sparkling Rhenish, looked 
on at it all with a pleasant sigh of amusement. 

“By Jove,” he murmured softly, with a contented smile 
about his lips, “that was a ringing run 1” 

At that very moment, as the words were spoken, a groom 
approached him hastily; his young brother, whom he 
had scarcely seen since the find, had been thrown and 
taken home on a hurdle ; the injuries were rumored to 
be serious. 

Bertie’s smile faded ; he looked very grave : world- 


THE END OF A RINGING RUN. 


85 


spoiled as he was, reckless in everything, and egotist 
though he had long been by profession, he loved the lad. 

When he entered the darkened room, with its faint chlo- 
roform odor, the boy lay like one dead, his bright hair 
scattered on the pillow, his chest bare, and his right arm 
broken and splintered. The deathlike coma was but the 
result of the chloroform ; but Cecil never stayed to ask or 
remember that : he was by the couch in a single stride, and 
dropped down by it, his head bent on his arms. 

“ It is my fault. I should have looked to him.” 

The words were very low ; he hated that any should see 
he could still be such a fool as to feel. A minute, and he 
conquered himself ; he rose, and with his hand on the 
boy’s fair tumbled curls, turned calmly to the medical men 
who, attached to the household, had been on the spot at 
once. 

“ What is the matter ?” 

“ Fractured arm, contusion, nothing serious, nothing at 
all, at his age,” replied the surgeon; “ when he wakes out 
of the lethargy he will tell you so himself, Mr. Cecil.” 

“ You are certain ?” — do what he would his voice shook 
a little ; his hand had not shaken, two days before, when 
nothing less than ruin or ransom had hung on his losing or 
winning the race. 

“Perfectly certain,” answered the surgeon cheerfully. 
“He is not overstrong, to be sure, but the contusions are 
slight ; he will be out of that bed in a fortnight.” 

“ How did he fall ?” 

But while they told him he scarcely heard ; he was look- 
ing at the handsome Antinous-like form of the lad as it 
lay stretched helpless and stricken before him ; and he was 
remembering the death-bed of their mother, when the only 
voice he had ever reverenced had whispered, as she pointed 
to the little child of three summers : — “ When you are a 
man take care of him, Bertie.” How had he fulfilled the 
injunction ? Into how much brilliantly-tinted evil had he 
not led him — by example at least ? 

The surgeon touched his arm apologetically, after a 
lengthened silence : 

“ Your brother will be best unexcited when he comes to 

8 


8G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


himself, sir ; look — his eyes are unclosing now. Could 
you do me the favor to go to his lordship ? His grief made 
him perfectly wild — so dangerous to his life at his age. 
We could only persuade him to retire, a few minutes ago, 
on the plea of Mr. Berkeley’s safety. If you could see 
him ” 

Cecil went, mechanically almost, and with a grave, 
weary depression on him ; he was so unaccustomed to 
think at all, so utterly unaccustomed to think painfully, 
that he scarcely knew what ailed him. Had he had his old 
tact about him, he would have known how worse than 
useless it would be for him to seek his father in such a 
moment. 

Lord Royallieu was lying back exhausted as Cecil 
opened the door of his private apartments, heavily dark- 
ened and heavily perfumed; at the turn of the lock he 
started up eagerly. 

“ What news of him ?” 

“ Good news, I hope,” said Cecil gently, as he came for- 
ward. “ The injuries are not grave, they tell me. I am so 
sorry that I never watched his fencing, but ” 

The old man had not recognized him till he heard his 
voice, and he waved him off with a fierce contemptuous 
gesture ; the grief for his favorite’s danger, the wild ter- 
rors that his fears had conjured up, his almost frantic 
agony at the sight of the accident, had lashed him into 
passion well-nigh delirious. 

“ Out of my sight, sir,” he said fiercely, his mellow tones 
quivering with rage. “ I wish to God you had been dead 
in a ditch before a hair of my boy’s had been touched. 
You live, and he lies dying there !” 

Cecil bowed in silence ; the brutality of the words 
wounded, but they did not offend him, for he knew his 
father was in that moment scarce better than a maniac, 
ind he was touched with the haggard misery upon the old 
Peer’s face. 

“ Out of my sight, sir,” re-echoed Lord Royallieu as he 
strode forward, passion lending vigor to his emaciated 
frame, while the dignity of his grand carriage blent with 
the furious force of his infuriated blindness. “ If you had 
had the heart of a man you would have saved such a child 


THE END OP A RINGING RUN. 


87 


as that from bis peril; warned him, watched him, succored 
him at least when he fell. Instead of that, you ride on 
and leave him to die, if death comes to him ! You are 
safe, you are always safe. You try to kill yourself with 
every vice under heaven, and only get more strength, more 
grace, more pleasure from it — you are always safe because 
I hate you. Yes ! I hate you, sir 1” 

No words can give the force, the malignity, the concen- 
trated meaning with which the words were hurled out, as 
the majestic form of the old Lord towered in the shadow, 
with his hands outstretched as if in imprecation. 

Cecil heard him in silence, doubting if he could hear 
aright, while the bitter phrases scathed and cut like 
scourges, but he bowed once more with the manner that 
was as inseparable from him as his nature. 

“ Hate is so very exhausting ; I regret I give you the 
trouble of it. May I ask why you favor me with it ?” 

“You may!” thundered his father, while his hawk’s 
eyes flashed their glittering fire. “ You are like the man 
I cursed living and curse dead. You look at me with 
Alan Bertie’s eyes, you speak to me with Alan Bertie’s 
voice ; I loved your mother, I worshiped her ; but — you 
are his son, not mine 1” 

The secret doubt, treasured so long, was told at last. 
The blood flushed Bertie’s face a deep and burning scarlet ; 
he started with an irrepressible tremor, like a man struck 
with a shot; he felt like one suddenly stabbed in the 
dark by a sure and a cruel hand. The insult and the 
amazement of the words seemed to paralyze him for the 
moment, the next he recovered himself, arfd lifted his head 
with as haughty a gesture as his father’s ; his features were 
perfectly composed again, and sterner than in all his care- 
less, easy life they ever yet had looked. 

“ You lie, and you know that you lie. My mother was 
pure as the angels. Henceforth you can be only to me a 
slanderer who has dared to taint the one name holy in my 
sight.” 

And without another word, he turned and went out of 
the chamber. Yet, as the door closed, old habit was so 
strong on him that, even in his hot and bitter pain, and' his 
bewildered sense of sudden outrage, he almost smiled at 


88 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


himself. “It is a mania; he does not know what ho 
says,” he thought. “ How could I be so melodramatic ? 
We were like two men at the Forte St. Martin. Inflated 
language is such a bad form I” 

But the cruel stroke had not struck the less closely 
home, and gentle though his nature was, beyond all for- 
giveness from Mm was the dishonor of his mother’s memory. 


CHAPTER VII. 

AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 

It was the height of the season, and the duties of the 
Household were proportionately and insupportably heavy. 
The Brigades were fairly worked to death, and the Indian 
service, in the heat of the Affghan war, was never more 
onerous than the campaigns that claimed the Guards from 
Derby to Ducal. 

Escorts to Levees, guards of honor to Drawing-rooms, 
or field-days in the Park and the Scrubs, were but the least 
portion of it. Far more severe, and still less to be shirked, 
were the morning exercise in the Ride ; the daily parade 
in the Lady’s Mile ; the reconnoissances from club win- 
dows, the videttes at Flirtation Corner; the long cam- 
paigns at mess-breakfasts, with the study of dice and 
baccarat tactics, and the fortifications of Strasburg pate 
against the invasions of Chartreuse and Chambertin ; the 
breathless, steady charges of Belgravian staircases when a 
fashionable drum beat the rataplan ; the skirmishes with 
sharp-shooters of the bright-armed Irregular Lances ; the 
foraging-duty when fair commanders wanted ices or straw- 
berries at garden parties ; the ball-practice at Hornsey 
Handicaps ; the terrible risk of crossing into the enemy’s 
lines, and being made to surrender as prisoners of war at 
the jails of St. George’s, or of St. Paul’s Knightsbridge ; 
the constant inspections of the Flying Battalions of the 


AFTER A RICIIMOND DINNER. 


89 


Ballet, and the pickets afterward in the Wood of St. 
John ; the anxieties of the Club commissariats, and the 
close vigilance over the mess wines; the fafigue duty ot 
ball-rooms, and the continual unharnessing consequent on 
the clause in the Regulations never to wear the same 
gloves twice ; all these, without counting the close battles 
of the Corner and the unremitting requirements of the 
Turf, worked the First Life and the rest of the Brigades, 
Horse and Foot, so hard and incessantly that some almost 
thought of changing into the dreary depot of St. Ste- 
phen’s ; and one mutinous Coldstreamer was even rash 
enough and false enough to his colors to meditate desert- 
ing to the enemy’s camp, and giving himself up at St. 
George’s — “ because a fellow once hanged is let alone, you 
know 1” 

The Household were very hard pressed through the sea- 
son — a crowded and brilliant one ; and Cecil was in request 
most of all. Bertie, somehow or other, was the fashion — 
marvelous and indefinable word, that gives a more power- 
ful crown than thrones, blood, beauty, or intellect can ever 
bestow. And no list was “the thing” without his name, 
no reception, no garden party, no opera-box, or private 
concert, or rose-shadowed boudoir, fashionably affichZ 
without being visited by him. How he, in especial, had 
got his reputation it would have been hard to say, unless 
it were that he dressed a shade more perfectly than any 
one, and with such inimitable carelessness in the perfection, 
too, and had an almost unattainable matchlessness in the 
sang froid of his soft, languid insolence, and incredible 
though ever gentle effrontery. However gained, he had 
it : and his beautiful hack Sahara, his mail-phaeton with 
two blood grays dancing in impatience over the stones, or 
his little dark-green brougham for night- work, were, one 
or another of them, always seen from two in the day till 
four or five in the dawn about the park or the town. 

And yet this season, while he made a prima donna by a 
bravissima, introduced a new tie by an evening’s wear, gave 
a cook the cordon with his praise, and rendered a fresh- 
invented liqueur the rage by his recommendation, Bertie 
knew very well that he was ruined. 

The breat h between his father and himself was irrevo- 
8 * 


90 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


cable. He had left Royallieu as soon as his guests had 
quitted it, and young Berkeley was out of all danger. He 
had long known he could look for no help from the old 
lord, or from his elder brother, the heir ; and now every 
chance of it was hopelessly closed ; nothing but the whim 
or the will of those who held his floating paper, and the 
tradesmen who had his name on their books at compound 
interest of the heaviest, stood between him and the fatal 
hour when he must “send in his papers to sell,” and be 
“ nowhere ” in the great race of life. 

He knew that a season, a month, a day, might be the 
only respite left him, the only pause for him betwixt his 
glittering luxurious world and the fiat of outlawry and 
exile. He knew that the Jews might be down on him any 
night that he sat at the Guards’ mess, flirted with foreign 
princesses, or laughed at the gossamer gossip of the town 
over iced drinks in the clubs. His liabilities were tremen- 
dous, his resources totally exhausted ; but such was the 
latent recklessness of the careless Royallieu blood, and 
such the languid devil-may-care of his training and his 
temper, that the knowledge scarcely ever seriously dis- 
turbed his enjoyment of the moment. Somehow r he never 
realized it. 

If any weatherwise had told the Lisbon people of the 
coming of the great earthquake, do you think they could 
have brought themselves to realize that midnight darkness, 
that yawning desolation which were nigh, while the sun 
was still so bright and the sea so tranquil, and the bloom 
so sweet on purple pomegranate and amber grape, and the 
scarlet of odorous flowers, and the blush of a girl’s kiss- 
warmed cheek ? 

A sentimental metaphor with which to compare the diffi- 
culties of a dandy of the Household, because his “stiff” 
was floating about in too many directions at too many high 
figures, and he had hardly enough till next pay-day came 
round to purchase the bouquets he sent and meet the club- 
fees that were due ! But, after all, may it not well be 
doubted if a sharp shock and a second’s blindness, and a 
sudden sweep down under the walls of the Cathedral or 
the waters of the Tagus, were not, on the whole, a quicker 
and pleasanter mode of extinction than that social earth- 


AF1ER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


91 


quake — “ gone to the bad with a crash?” And the Lis- 
bonites did not more disbelieve in, and dream less of their 
coming ruin, than Cecil did his, while he was doing the 
season, with engagements enough in a night to spread 
over a month, the best horses in the town, a dozen rose- 
notes sent to his clubs or his lodgings in a day, and the 
newest thing in soups, colts, beauties, neckties, perfumes, 
tobaccos, or square dances, waiting his dictum to become 
the fashion. 

“ How you do go on with those women, Beauty,” 
growled the Seraph, one day after a morning of fearful 
hard. work consequent on having played the Foot Guards 
at Lord’s, and, in an unwary moment, having allowed him- 
self to be decoyed afterward to a private concert, and 
very nearly proposed to in consequence, during a Sym- 
phony in A ; an impending terror from which he could 
hardly restore himself by puffing Turkish like a steam-en- 
gine, to assure himself of his jeopardized safety. “ You’re 
horribly imprudent 1” 

“ Not a bit of it,” rejoined Beauty serenely. “ That is 
the superior wisdom and beautiful simplicity of making 
love to your neighbor’s wife ; — she can’t marry you !” 

“But she may get you into the D. C.,” mused the Ser- 
aph, who had gloomy personal recollection of having been 
twice through that phase of law and life, and of having 
been enormously mulcted in damages because he was a 
Duke in futuro, and because, as he piteously observed on 
the occasion, “ You couldn’t make that fellow Cresswell 
see that it was they ran away with me each time I” 

“ Oh ! everybody goes through the D. C. somehow or 
other,” answered Cecil, with philosophy. “ It’s like the 
Church, the Commons, and the Gallows, you know — one 
of the popular Institutions.” 

“And it’s the only Law Court where the robber cuts a 
better figure4han the robbed,” laughed the Seraph, con- 
soling himself that he had escaped the future chance of 
showing in the latter class of marital defrauded, by shying 
that proposal during the Symphony in A, on which his 
thoughts ran, as the thoughts of one who has just escaped 
from an Alpine crevasse, run on the past abyss in which 
he has been so nearly lost forever. “ I say, Beauty, were 


92 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


you ever near doing anything serious — asking anybody to 
marry you, eh ? I suppose you have been — they do make 
such awful hard running on one !” and the poor hunted. 
Seraph stretched his magnificent limbs with the sigh of a 
martyred innocent. 

“ I was once — only once !” 

“ Ah, by Jove ! and what saved you ?” 

The Seraph lifted himself a little, with a sort of pitying 
sympathizing curiosity toward a fellow-sufferer. 

“Well, I’ll tell you,” said Bertie, with a sigh as of a 
man who hated long sentences, and who was about to 
plunge into a painful past. “ It’s ages ago; day I was at 
a Drawing-room ; year Blue Ruin won the Clearwell for 
Royal, I think. Wedged up there, in that poking place, 

I saw such a face — the deuce, it almost makes me feel en- 
thusiastic now. She was just out — an angel with a train ! 
She had delicious eyes — like a spaniel’s you know — a cheek 
like this peach, and lips like that strawberry, there, on the 
top of your ice. She looked at me, and I was in love ! I 
knew who she was — Irish lord’s daughter — girl I could 
have had for the asking ; and I vow that I thought I 
would ask her — I actually was as far gone as that, I actu- 
ally said to myself, I’d hang about her a w T eek or two, and 
then propose. You’ll hardly believe it, but I did ! Watched 
her presented ; such grace, such a smile, such a divine lift 
of the lashes. I was really in love, and with a girl who 
would marry me ! I was never so near a fatal thing in 
my life ” 

“ Well ?” asked the Seraph, pausing to listen till he let 
the ice in his sherry-cobbler melt away : when you have 
been so near breaking your neck down the Matrimonial 
Matterhorn, it is painfully interesting to hear how your 
friend escaped the same risks of descent. 

“Well,” resumed Bertie, “I was very near it. I did 
nothing but watch her ; she saw me, and I felt she was as 
flattered and as touched as she ought to be. She blushed 
most enchantingly ; just enough, you know; she was con- 
scious I followed her ; I contrived to get close to her as 
eshe passed out, so close that I could see those exquisite 
e^es lighten and gleam, those exquisite lips part with a 
sigh that beautiful face beam with the sunshine of a 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


93 


radiant smile. It was the dawn of love I had taught her ! 
I pressed nearer and nearer, and I caught her soft whisper 
as she leaned to her mother : ‘ Mamma , Tm so hungry! 
1 could eat a whole chicken /’ The sigh, the smile, the 
blush, the light, were for her dinner — not for me I The 
spell was broken forever. A girl whom I had looked at 
could think of wings and merry-thoughts and white sauce ! 
I have never been near a proposal again.” 

The Seraph, with the clarion roll of his gay laughter, 
flung a hautboy at him. 

“ Hang you, Beauty I If I didn’t think you were going 
to tell one how you really got out of a serious thing; it 
is so awfully difficult to keep clear of them nowadays. 
Those before-dinner teas are only just so many new traps ! 
What became of her — eh ?” 

“ She married a Scotch laird and became socially ex- 
tinct, somewhere among the Hebrides. Serve her right,” 
murmured Cecil, sententiously. “ Only think what she 
lost just through hungering for a chicken; if I hadn’t 
have proposed for her, for one hardly keeps the screw up 
to such self-sacrifice as that- when one is cool the next 
morning, I would have made her the fashion !” 

With which masterly description in one phrase of all he 
could have done for the ill-starred debutante who had 
been hungry in the wrong place, Cecil lounged out of the 
club to drive with half a dozen of his set to a water-party 
— a Bacchanalian water-party, with the Zu-Zu and her 
sisters for the Naiads and the Household for their Tritons. 

A water-party whose water element apparently con- 
sisted in driving down to Richmond, dining at nine, being 
three hours over the courses, contributing seven guineas 
apiece for the repast, listening to the songs of the Cafe 
Alcazar, reproduced with matchless elan by a pretty 
French actress, being pelted with brandy cherries by the 
Zu-Zu, seeing their best cigars thrown away half-smoked 
by pretty pillagers, and driving back again to town in the 
soft starry night, with the gay rhythms ringing from the 
box-seat as the leaders dashed along in a stretching gallop 
down the Kew Road. It certainly had no other more 
aquatic feature in it save a little drifting about for twenty 
minutes before dining, in toy boats and punts, as the sun 


94 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


was setting, while Laura Lelas, the brunette actress, sang 
a barcarolle that would have been worthy of medieval 

“Venice, and her people, only born to bloom and drop.” 

It did not set Cecil thinking, however, after Browning’s 
fashion, 

“ Where be all those 

Dear dead women, with such hair too, what’s become of all the gold 
Used to hang and brush their bosoms ? I feel chilly and grown old ; ” 

because, in the first place, it was a canon with him never 
to think at all ; in the second, if put to it he would have 
averred that he knew nothing of Venice, except that it 
was a musty old bore of a place, where they worried you 
about visas and luggage and all that, chloride of lim’d you 
if you came from the East, and couldn’t give you a mount 
if it were ever so ; and in the third, instead of longing for 
the dear dead women, he was entirely contented with the 
lovely living ones who were at that moment puffing the 
smoke of his scented cigarettes into his eyes, making him 
eat lobster drowned in Chablis, or pelting him with bon- 
bons. 

As they left the Star and Garter, Laura Lelas, mounted 
on Cecil’s box-seat, remembered she had dropped her 
cashmere in the dining-room. A cashmere is a Parisian’s 
soul, idol, and fetish ; servants could not find it ; Cecil, 
who, to do him this justice, was always as courteous to a 
comedienne as to a countess, went himself. Passing the 
open windows of another room, he recognized the face of 
his little brother among a set of young Civil Service fel- 
lows, attaches, and cornets. They had no women with 
them ; but they had brought what was perhaps worse — 
dice for hazard — and were turning the unconscious Star 
and Garter into an impromptu Crockford’s over their wine. 

Little Berke’s pretty face was very flushed ; his lips 
were set tight, his eyes were glittering ; the boy had the 
gambler’s passion of the Royallieu blood in its hottest in- 
tensity. He was playing with a terrible eagerness that 
went to Bertie’s heart with the same sort of pang of re- 
morse with which he had looked on him when he had been 
thrown like dead on his bed at home. 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


95 


Cecil stopped and leaned over the open window. 

“Ah, young one, I did not know you were here. We 
are going home ; will you come ?” he asked, with a care- 
less nod to the rest of the young fellows. 

Berkeley looked up with a wayward, irritated annoy- 
ance. 

“ No, I can’t,” he said, irritably ; “ don’t you see we are 
playing, Bertie ?” 

“ I see,” answered Cecil, with a dash of gravity, almost 
of sadness in him, as he leaned farther over the window- 
sill with his cigar in his teeth. 

“ Come away,” he whispered kindly, as he almost touched 
the boy, who chanced to be close to the casement. “Haz- 
ard is the very deuce for anybody ; and you know Royal 
hates it. Come with us, Berke : there’s a capital set here, 
and I’m going to half a dozen good houses to-night, when 
we get back. I’ll take you with me. Come 1 you like 
waltzing, and all that sort of thing, you know.” 

The lad shook himself peevishly j a sullen cloud over 
his fair, picturesque, boyish face. 

“Let me alone before the fellows,” he muttered impa- 
tiently. “ I won’t come, I tell you.” 

“Soil!” 

Cecil shrugged his shoulders, left the window, found the 
Lelas’ cashmere, and sauntered back to the drags without 
any more expostulation. The sweetness of his temper 
could never be annoyed, but also he never troubled himself 
to utter useless words. Moreover, he had never been in 
his life much in earnest about anything ; it was not worth 
while. 

“A pretty fellow I am to turn preacher, when I have 
sins enough on my own shoulders for twenty,” he thought, 
as he shook the ribbons and started the leaders off to the 
gay music of Laura Lelas’ champagne-tuned laughter. 

The thoughts that had crossed his mind when he had 
looked on his brother’s inanimate form, had not been 
wholly forgotten since ; he felt something like self-accusa- 
tion whenever he saw, in some gray summer dawn, as he 
had seen now, the boy’s bright face, haggard and pale with 
the premature miseries of the gamester, or heard his half- 
piteous, half-querulous lamentations over his losses ; and 


*6 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


he would essay, with all the consummate tact the world had 
taught him, to persuade him from his recklessness, and 
warn him of its consequences. But little Berke, though he 
loved his elder after a fashion, was wayward, selfish, and 
unstable as water. He would be very sorry sometimes, 
vefy repentant, and would promise anything under the sun ; 
but five minutes afterward he would go his own way just 
the same, and be as irritably resentful of interference as a 
proud, spoiled, still-childish temper can be. And Cecil — 
the last man in the world to turn mentor — would light a 
cheroot, as he did to-night, and forget all about it. The 
boy would be right enough when he had had his swing, he 
thought. Bertie’s philosophy was the essence of laissez 
faire. 

He would have defied a Manfred, or an Aylmer of Ayl- 
mer’s Field, to be long pursued by remorse or care if he 
drank the right cru and lived in the right set. “ If it be 
very severe,” he would say, “ it may give him a pang once 
a twelvemonth, — say the morning after a whitebait dinner. 
Repentance is generally the fruit of indigestion, and contri- 
tion may generally be traced to too many truffles or olives.” 

Cecil had no time or space for thought; he never 
thought; would not have thought seriously for a kingdom. 
A novel, idly skimmed over in bed, was the extent of his 
literature ; he never bored himself by reading the papers, 
he heard the news earlier than they told it ; and as he lived, 
he was too constantly supplied from the world about him 
with amusement and variety to have to do anything beyond 
letting himself be amused : quietly fanned, as it were, with 
the lulling punkah of social pleasure, without even the 
trouble of pulling the strings. He had naturally consid- 
erable talents, and an almost dangerous facility in them ; 
but he might have been as brainless as a mollusc for any 
exertion he gave his brain. 

“ If I were a professional diner-out, you know, I’d use 
such wits as I have : but why should I now ?” he said on 
one occasion, when a fair lady reproached him with this 

inertia. “ The best style is only just to say yes and no 

and be bored even in saying that — and a very comfortable 
style it is, too. You get amused without the trouble of 
opening your lips.” 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


91 


“But if everybody were equally monosyllabic, how then ? 
you would not get amused,” suggested his interrogator, a 
brilliant Parisienne. 

“Well — everybody is pretty nearly,” said Bertie ; “but 
there are always a lot of fellows who give their wits to get 
their dinners — social rockets, you know — who will always 
fire themselves off to sparkle instead of you if you give 
them a white ball at the clubs, or get them a card for good 
houses. It saves you so much trouble; it is such a bore 
to have to talk.” 

He went that night, as he had said, to half a dozen good 
houses, midnight receptions, and after-midnight waltzes, 
making his bow in a Cabinet Minister’s vestibule, and 
taking up the thread of the same flirtation at three different 
balls, showing himself for a moment at a Premier’s At- 
home, and looking eminently graceful and pre-eminently 
weary in an ambassadress’s drawing-room, and winding up 
the series by a dainty little supper in the gray of the morn- 
ing, with a sparkling party of French actresses, as bright 
as the bubbles of their own Clicquot. 

When he went up stairs to his own bed-room, in Pic- 
cadilly, about five o’clock, therefore, he was both ^sleepy 
and tired, and lamented to that cherished and ever-discreet 
confidant, a cheroot, the brutal demands of the Service, 
which would drag him off, in five hours’ time, without the 
slightest regard to his feelings, to take share in the hot, 
heavy, dusty, scorching work of a field-day up at the 
Scrubs. 

“ Here — get me to perch as quick as you can, Rake,” 
he murmured, dropping into an arm-chair: astonished that 
Rake did not answer, he saw standing by him instead the 
boy Berkeley. Surprise was a weakness of raw inexperi- 
ence that Cecil never felt ; his gazette as Commander-in- 
Chief, or the presence of the Wandering Jew in his lodg- 
ings would never have excited it in him. In the first place, 
he would have merely lifted his eyebrows and said, “Be a 
fearful bore !” in the second he would have done the same, 
and murmured, “ Queer old cad 1” 

Surprised, therefore, he was not, at the boy’s untimely 
apparition ; but his eyes dwelt on him with a mild wonder, 
while his lips dropped but one word : 

* G 9 


98 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Amber- Amulet ?” 

Amber- Amulet was a colt of the most marvelous promise 
at the Royallieu establishment, looked on to win the next 
Clearwell, Guineas, and Derby as a certainty. An accident 
to the young chestnut was the only thing that suggested 
itself as of possibly sufficient importance to make his 
brother wait for him at five o’clock on a June morning. 

Berkeley looked up confusedly, impatiently : 

“ You are never thinking but of horses or women,” he 
said, peevishly ; “there may be other things in the world, 
surely.” 

“ Indisputably there are other things in the world, dear 
boy, but none so much to my taste,” said Cecil, composedly, 
stretching himself with a yawn. “With every regard to 
hospitality, and the charms of your society, might I hint 
that five o’clock in the morning is not precisely the most 
suitable hour for social visits and ethical questions ?” 

“ For God’s sake be serious, Bertie ! I am the most 
miserable wretch in creation.” 

Cecil opened his closed eyes, with the sleepy indifference 
vanished from them, aud a look of genuine and affectionate 
concern on the serene insouciance of his face. 

“Ah, you would stay and play that chicken hazard,” he 
thought, but he was not one who would have reminded the 
boy of his own advice and its rejection ; he looked at him 
in silence a moment, then raised himself with a sigh. 

“ Dear boy, why didn’t you sleep upon it ? 1 never think 
of disagreeable things till they wake me with my coffee; 
then I take them up with the cup and put them dowu with 
it. You don’t know how well it answers ; it disposes of 
them wonderfully.” 

The boy lifted his head with a quick, reproachful anger, 
and in the gaslight his cheeks were flushed, his eyes full of 
tears. 

“How brutal you are, Bertie 1 I tell you I am ruined, 
and you care no more than if you were a stone. You only 
think of yourself ; you only live for yourself l” 

He had forgotten the money that had been tossed to him 
off that very table the day before the Grand Military ; ho 
had forgotten the debts that had been paid for him out of 
the winnings of that very race. There is a childish, way- 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


99 


ward, wailing temper, which never counts benefits received 
save as title-deeds by which to demand others. Cecil looked 
at him with just a shadow of regret, not reproachful enough 
to be rebuke, in his glance, but did not defend himself in 
any way against the boyish-passionate accusation, nor 
recal his own past gifts into remembrance. m* 

“ ‘Brutal 1’ What a word, little one. Nobody’s brutal 
now; you never see that form nowadays. Come, what is 
the worst this time V ’ 

Berkeley looked sullenly down on the table where his 
elbows leaned, scattering the rose-notes, the French novels, 
the cigarettes, and the gold essence-bottles with which it 
was strewn ; there was something dogged yet agitated, 
half- insolent yet half- timidly irresolute, upon him, that was 
new there. 

“ The worst is soon told,” he said, huskily, and his teeth 
chattered together slightly as though with cold as he spoke : 
“ I lost two hundred to-night ; I must pay it, or be dis- 
graced forever ; I have not a farthing ; I cannot get the 
money for my life; no Jews will lend to me, I am under 

age ; and — and ” his voice sank lower and grew more 

defiant, for he knew that the sole thing forbidden him per- 
emptorily by both his father and his brothers was the thing 
he had now to tell, “and — I borrowed three ponies of 
Granville Lee yesterday, as he came from the Corner with a 
lot of bank-notes after settling-day. I told him I would pay 
them to-morrow; I made sure I should have won to-night.” 

The piteous unreason of the born gamester, who clings 
so madly to the belief that luck must come to him, and acts 
on that belief as though a bank were his to lose his gold 
from, was never more utterly spoken in all its folly, in all 
its pitiable opticism, than now in the boy’s confession. 

Bertie started from his chair, his sleepy languor dissi- 
pated, on his face the look that had come there when Lord 
Royallieu had dishonored his mother’s name. In his code 
there was one shameless piece of utter and unmentionable 
degradation — it was to borrow of a friend. 

“ You will bring some disgrace on us before yon die, 
Berkeley,” he said, with a keener infliction of pain and 
contempt than had ever been in his voice. “Have you no 
common knowledge of honor ?” 


100 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


The lad flushed under the lash of the words, but it was 
a flush of anger rather than of shame ; he did not lift his 
eyes, but gazed sullenly down on the yellow paper of a 
Paris romance he was irritably dog-earing. 

“.You are severe enough,” he said, gloomily, and yet 
iosaicntly. “Are you such a mirror of honor yourself? 
I suppose my debts at the worst are about one-fifth of 
yours.” 

For a moment even the sweetness of Cecil’s temper 
almost gave way. Be his debts what they would, there 
was not one among them to his friends, or one for which 
the law could not seize him. He was silent ; he did not 
wish to have a scene of dissension with one who was but a 
child to him ; moreover, it was. his nature to abhor scenes 
of any sort, and to avert even a dispute, at any cost. 

He came back and sat down without any change of ex- 
pression, putting his cheroot in his mouth. 

“ Tres cher , you are not courteous,” he said, wearily, 
“but it may be that you are right. I am riot a good one 
for you to copy from in anything, except the fit of my 
coats; I don’t think I ever told you I was. I am not 
altogether so satisfied with myself as to suggest myself as 
a model for anything, unless it were to stand in a tailor’s 
window in Bond Street to show the muffs how to dress. 
That isn’t the point though ; you say you want near 300/. 
by tomorrow — to-day rather. I can suggest nothing ex- 
cept to take the morning mail to the Shires, and ask Royal 
straight out ; he never refuses you.” 

Berkeley looked at him with a bewildered terror that 
banished at a stroke his sullen defiance ; he was irresolute 
as a girl, and keenly moved by fear. 

“ I would rather cut my throat,” he said, with a wild 
exaggeration that was but the literal reflection of the trepi- 
dation on him ; “ as I live I would ! I have had so much 
from him lately — you don’t know how much — and now of 
all times, when they threaten to foreclose the mortgage on 
Royallieu ” 

“ What ? foreclose what ?” 

“ The mortgage !” answered Berkeley, impatiently ; to 
his childish egotism it seemed cruel and intolerable that 
any extremities should be considered save his own. “You 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


101 


know the lands are mortgaged as deeply as Monti and the 
entail would allow them. They threatened to foreclose — 1 
think that’s the word — and Royal has had, God knows 
what work to stave them off; I no more dare face him, 
and ask him for a sovereign now, than I dare ask him to 
give me the gold plate off the sideboard.’’ ^ 

Cecil listened gravely ; it cut him more keenly than he 
showed to learn the evils and the ruin that so closely 
menaced his house ; and to find how entirely his father’s 
morbid mania against him severed him from all the inter- 
ests and all the confidence of his family, and left him 
ignorant of matters even so nearly touching him as these. 

“Your intelligence is not cheerful, little one,” he said, 
with a languid stretch of his limbs; it was his nature to 
glide off painful subjects. “And — I really am sleepy! 
You think there is no hope Royal would help you ?” 

“ I tell you I will shoot myself through the brain rather 
than ask him.” 

Bertie moved restlessly in the soft depths of his loung- 
ing-chair ; he shunned worry, loathed it, escaped it at 
every portal, and here it came to him just when he wanted 
to go to sleep. He could not divest himself of the feeling 
that, had his own career been different, less extravagant, 
less dissipated, less indolently spendthrift, he might have 
exercised a better influence, and his brother’s young life 
might have been more prudently launched upon th^world. 
He felt, too, with a sharper pang than he had ever felt it 
for himself, the brilliant beggary in which he lived, the 
utter inability he had to raise even the sum that the boy 
now needed, a sum, so trifling in his set and with his 
habits, that he had betted it over and over again in a club- 
room on a single game of whist. It cut him with a bitter 
impatient pain; he was as generous as the winds, aid 
there is no trial keener to such a temper than the poverty 
that paralyzes its power to give. 

“ It is no use to give you false hopes, young one,” he 
said gently. “ I can do nothing 1 You ought to know 
me by this time, and if you do, you know too that if the 
money were mine, it should be yours at a word ; — if you 
don’t, no matter ! Frankly, Berke, I am all down hill ; 
my bills may be called in any moment; when they are I 


102 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


must send in my papers to sell, and cut the country, if my 
duns don’t catch me -before, which they probably will, in 
which event I shall be, to all intents and purposes — dead. 
This is not lively conversation, but you will do me the jus- 
tice to say that it was not I who introduced it. Only — » 
one jvord for all, my boy, understand this : if I could help 
you I would, cost what it might, but as matters stand — I ’ 
cannot.” 

And with that Cecil puffed a great cloud of smoke to 
envelop him ; the subject was painful, the denial wounded 
him by whom it had to be given full as much as it could 
wound him whom it refused. Berkeley heard it in silence, 
his head still hung down, his color changing, his hands 
nervously playing with the bouquet-bottles, shutting and 
opening their gold tops. 

“No — yes — I know,” he said hurriedly; “I have no 
right to expect it, and have been behaving like a cur, 

and — and — all that I know. But there is one way 

you could save me, Bertie, if it isn’t too much for a fellow 
to ask.” 

“ I can’t say I see the way, little one,” said Cecil with a 
sigh. “ What is it ?” 

“ Why — look here. You see I’m not of age ; my sig- 
nature is of no use ; they won’t take it ; else I could get 
money in no time on what must come to me when Royal 
dies ; though ’tisn’t enough to make the Jews ‘ melt 7 at a 
risk. Now — now — look here. I can’t see that there could 
be any harm in it. You are such chums with Lord Rock- 
ingham, and he’s as rich as all the Jews put together. 
What could there be in it if you just asked him to lend 
you a monkey for me ? He’d do it in a minute, because 
he’d give his head away to you — they all say so — and he’d 
never miss it. Now, Bertie will you ?” 

In his boyish incoherence and its disjointed inelegance 
the appeal was panted out rather than spoken, and while 
his head drooped and the hot color burned in his face, he 
darted a swift look at his brother, so full of dread and 
misery that it pierced Cecil to the quick as he rose from 
his chair and paced the room, flinging his cheroot aside ; 
the look disarmed the reply that was on his lips, but his 
face grew dark. 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


103 


“What yon ask is impossible,” he said briefly. “ If I 
did soeh a thing as that, I should deserve to be hounded 
out of the Guards to-morrow.” 

The boy’3 face grew more sullen, more haggard, more 
evil, a3 he still bent his arms on the table, his glance not 
meeting his brother’s. 

“You speak as if it would be a crime,” he muttered 
savagely, with a plaintive moan of pain in the tone ; he 
thought himself cruelly dealt with, and unjustly punished. 

“It would be the trick of a swindler, and it would be 
the shame of a gentleman,” said Cecil as briefly still. 
“That is answer enough.” 

“ Then you will not do it ?” 

“I have replied already.” 

There was that in the tone, and in the look with which 
he paused before the table, that Berkeley had never heard 
or seen in him before ; something that made the supple, 
childish, petulant, cowardly nature of the boy shrink and 
be silenced ; something for a single instant of the haughty 
and untamable temper of the Royallieu blood that awoke 
in the too feminine softness and sweetness of Cecil’s dis- 
position. 

“ You said that you would aid me at any cost, and now 
that I ask you so wretched a trifle, you treat me as if I 
were a scoundrel,” he moaned passionately. “ The Seraph 
would give you the money at a word. It is your pride — 
nothing but pride. Much. pride is worth to us who are 
penniless beggars!” 

“ If we are penniless beggars, by what right should we 
borrow of other men ?” 

“ You are wonderfully scrupulous all of a sudden !” 

Cecil shrugged his shoulders slightly and began to smoke 
again. He did not attempt to push the argument. His 
character was too indolent to defend itself against asper- 
sion. and horror of a quarrelsome scene far greater than 
his hied of misconstruction. 

“You are a brute to me!” went on the lad, with his 
querulous and bitter passion rising almost to tears like a 
woman’s. “ You pretend you cau refuse me nothing ; and 
the moment I ask you the smallest thing, you turn round 
on me, and speak as if I were the greatest blackguard on 


104 


UNDER TWO FLAG& 


earttL You’ll let me go to the bad to-morrow rather than 
bend your pride to save me ; yon live like a Poke, and 
don’t care if I should die in a debtors’ prison ! You only 
brag about 1 honor ’ when you want to get out of helping 
a fellow, and if I were to cut my throat to-night you 
would only shrug your shoulders, and sneer at my death 
in the club-room, with a jest picked out of your cursed 
French novels J” 

“ Melodramatic, and scarcely correct,” murmured Bertie. 

The ingratitude to himself touched him indeed but little ; 
he was not given to making much of anything that was 
due to himself, partly through carelessness, partly through 
generosity ; but the absence in his brother of that delicate, 
intangible, indescribable sensitive-nerve which men call 
Honor, an absence that had never struck on him so vividly 
as it did to-night, troubled him, surprised him, oppressed 
him. 

There is no science that can supply this defect to the 
temperament created without it ; it may be taught a coun- 
terfeit, but it will never own a reality. 

“ Little one, you are heated, and don’t know what yon 
say,” he began very gently a few moments later, as he leaned 
forward and looked straight in the boy’s eyes; “don't 
be down about this ; you will pull through, never fear. 
Listen to me ; go down to Royal, and tell him all frankly. 
I know him better than you; he will be savage for a 
second, but he would sell every stick and stone on the land 
for your sake ; he will see yon safe through this. Only 
bear one thing in mind — tell him all . No half measures, 
no half confidences ; tell him the worst, and ask his help. 
You will not come back without it.” 

Berkeley listened, hi3 eyes shunning his brother’s, the 
red color darker on his face. 

“ Do as I say,” said Cecil very gently stilL “ Tell him, 
if yon like, that it is through following my follies that you 
have come to grief ; he will be sure to pity you theft.” 

There was a smile, a little sad, on his lips, as he said the 
last words, but it passed at once as he added : 

“ Do you hear me, will you go ?” 

“If you want me — yes.” 

“ On your word, now T ” 


AFTER A RICHMOND DISCOS. 


105 


“ Oa mr woii” 

There was an impatience in the answer. a feverish eager- 
ness in the ~lt he asenteti, that might hare made the 
consent rather a mean? to trade the pressnre than a genu- 
ine pie Ire to follow the a Trite: that darker, more eril, 
more decant look, was still upon his face. sweeoinr its 
youth away and leaving in its stead a wavering shadow. 
He rose with a so Hen movement; his tamo Hi hair, his 
disordered attire, hi? bloodshot eye?, his haggard look of 
sleeplessness ani esmioement in strange contrast with the 
easy perfection of CedL s dees? ani the calm languor of is 
attitnie. The bor was v^rr voanc: and ~is not seasoned 
to his lire and acclimatized to his rain like his eiier i roomer. 
He looked at him with a certain petnlan: envy ; the envy 
of everv Tonnz fellow for a man of tee word, I beg 
yonr pardon for keeoing yen np, Bertie." he saii haskily. 
*• Good night." 

Cecil gav? a little yawn. 

•• Dear bev, i: would _ave been better if Toa coni 1 hare 
come in with the eofbe. b’ete: be imp nisi ve ; don't do a 
bit of good, ani l? such a had form ! 

era x 

ni spoke light.' y. serenely, both because sneh w as as 
much his nature as it wns to breathe. aid because his heart 
was heavy that he had to sen i a war the v oanz :ie with _ n: 
help, tmongh he anew that tne coarse ne had made him 
adopt wonid serve him mere permanently in the end. Bat 
he leant his haii a second on Berke's shoal ter, widie for 
one single moment in his life he grew semens. 

•*Y:n most knew I en d not do what yon asked: I 
could net meet any man in the Gaerds face to fane if I 
sank myself and sank them so le w. C_n: yon see to.it. 
little one V' 

Tnere was a wishfniness in the last words: he wocli 
gladly hare believed that his brother had at length soma 
perception of his meaning. 

Yog say so, ani that Is enough." saii the boy, net- 
I cannot nnierstand that I asked anything so 
dreaded : bn: I suppose yon have too many needs of year 
own to hare any resources left for mine." 

Cecil snmggei his shoulders slightly again, and let him 
re. Bn: he coaid not Altogether banish a pang of pain at 


rish.y ; 


10G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


his heart, less even for his brother’s ingratitude than at his 
callousness to all those finer, better instincts of which honor 
is the concrete name. For the moment, thought, grave, 
weary, and darkened, fell on him ; he had passed through 
what lie would have suffered any amount of misconstruction 
to escape — a disagreeable scene ; he had been as unable as 
though he were a Commissionaire in. the streets to advance 
a step to succor the necessities for which his help had been 
asked ; and he was forced, despite all his will, to look for 
the first time blankly in the face the ruin that awaited him. 
There was no other name for it : it would be ruin complete 
and wholly inevitable. His signature would have been ac- 
cepted no more by any bill-discounter in London ; he had 
forestalled all, to the uttermost farthing ; his debts pressed 
heavier every day; he could have no power to avert the 
crash that must in a few weeks, or at most a few months, 
fall upon him. * And to him an utter blankness and dark- 
ness lay beyond. 

Barred out from the only life he knew, the only life that 
seemed to him endurable or worth the living ; severed from 
all the pleasures, pursuits, habits, and luxuries of long cus- 
tom ; deprived of all that had become to him as second 
nature from childhood ; sold up, penniless, driven out from 
all that he had known as the very necessities of existence, 
his very name forgotten in the world of which he was now 
the darling, a man without a career, without a hope, without 
a refuge — he could not realize that thi3 was what awaited 
him then ; this was the fate that must within so short a space 
be his. Life had gone so smoothly with him, and his world 
was a world from whose surface every distasteful thought 
was so habitually excluded, that he could no more under- 
stand this desolation lying in wait for him, than one in the 
fullness and elasticity of health can believe the doom that 
tells him he will be a dead man before the sun has set. 

As he sat there, with the gas of the mirror branches 
glancing on the gold and silver hilts of the cross swords 
above the fireplace, and the smoke of his cheroot curling 
among the pile of invitation cards to all the best Louses 
in the town, Cecil could not bring himself to believe that 
things were really come to this pass with him; it is so 
hard for a man who has the magnificence of the fashiona- 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


107 


ble clubs open to him day and night to beat into his brain 
the truth that in six months hence he may be lying in the 
debtors’ prison at Baden ; it is so difficult for a man who 
has had no greater care on his mind than to plan the cour- 
tesies of a Guards’ Ball or of a yacht’s summer-day ban- 
quet, to absolutely conceive the fact that in a year’s time 
he will thank God if he have a few francs left to pay for 
a wretched dinner in a miserable estaminet in a foreign 
bathing-place. 

“It mayn’t come to that,” he thought; “something 
may happen. If I could get my troop now, that would 
stave off the Jews, or if I should win some heavy pots 
on the Prix de Dames, things would swim on again. I 
must win ; the King will be as fit as in the Shires, and 
there will only be the French horses between us and an 
absolute ‘walkover.’ Things mayn’t come to the worst 
after all.” 

And so careless and quickly oblivious, happily or un- 
happily, was his temperament, that he read himself to 
sleep with Terrail’s “Club des Valets de Cceur and slept 
in ten minutes’ time as composedly as though he had 
inherited fifty thousand a year. 

That evening in the loose-box down at Boyallieu, For- 
est King sto6d without any body-clothing, for the night 
was close and sultry; a lock of the sweetest hay unnoticed 
in his rack, and his favorite wheaten-gruel standing un- 
cared-for under his very nose : the King was in the height 
of excitation, alarm, and haughty wrath. Ilis ears were 
laid flat to his head, his nostrils were distended, his eyes 
were glancing uneasily with a nervous angry fire rarely in 
him, and ever and anon he lashed out his heels with a tre- 
mendous thundering thud against the opposite wall with a 
force that reverberated through the stables, and made his 
companions start and edge away. It was precisely these 
companions that the aristocratic hero of the Soldiers’ Blue 
Ribbon scornfully abhorred. 

They had just been looking him over — to their own im- 
minent peril; and the patrician winner of the Yase, the 
brilliant six-year old of Paris, and Shire and Spa steeple- 
chase fame, the knightly descendant of the White Cockade 


108 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


blood, and of tho courses of Circassia, had resented the 
familiarity proportionately to hi3 own renown and dignity. 
The King was a very sweet-tempered horse, a perfect tern* 
per, indeed, and ductile to a touch from those he loved; 
but he liked very few, and would suffer liberties from none. 
And of a truth his prejudices were very just; and if his 
clever heels had caught — as it was not his fault that they 
did hot — the heads of his two companions, instead of com- 
ing with that ponderous crash into the panels of his box, 
society would certainly have been no loser, and his owner 
would have gained more than had ever before hung in the 
careless balance of his life. 

But the iron heels, with their shining plates, only caught 
the oak of his box-door; and the tete-a-tete in the sultry 
oppressive night went on as the speakers moved to a pru- 
dent distance, one of them thoughtfully chewing a bit of 
straw, after the immemorial habit of grooms, who ever 
seem as if they had been born into this world with a corn- 
stalk ready in their mouths. 

“ It’s a’most a pity — he’s in such perfect condition. Tip- 
top. Cool as a cucumber after the longest pipe-opener ; 
licks his oats up to the last grain ; leads the whole string 
such a rattling spin as never was spun but by a Derby 
cracker before him. It’s a’most a pity,” said Willon medi- 
tatively, eyeing his charge, the King, with remorseful 
glances. 

“ Prut — tush — tish !” said his companion, with a whistle 
in his teeth that ended with a “damnation 1” “It’ll only 
knock him over for the race ; he’ll be right as a trivet 
after it. What’s your little game, coming it soft like that 
all of a sudden ? You hate that ere young swell like 
pison ” 

“Ay,” assented the head groom with a tigerish energy, 

viciously consuming his bit of straw. “ What for am I 

head groom come; nigh twenty years ; and to Markisses 
and Wiscounts afore him — put aside in that ere way for a 
fellow as he’s took into his service out of the dregs of a 
regiment, what was tied up at the triangles and branded 
D, as I know on, and sore suspected of even worse games 
than that, and now is that set up with pride and sich-like, 
that nobody’s woice ain’t heard here except his ; I say what 


AFTER A RICHMOND DINNER. 


109 


am I called on to bear it for ?” and the head groom’s tones 
grew hoarse and vehement, roaring louder under his inju- 
ries. “A man what’s attended an Duke’s ’osses ever since 
he was a shaver, to be put aside for that workhus black- 
guard 1 A ’oss has a cold — it’s Rake’s mash what’s to be 
given. A ’oss is off his feed — it’s Rake what’s to weigh 
out the niter and steel. A ’oss is a buck-jumper — it’s Rake 
what’s to cure him. A ’oss is entered for a race — it’s 
Rake what’s to order his mornin’ gallops, and his go- 
downs o’ water. It’s past bearin’ to have a rascally chap 
what’s been and gone and turned walet, set up over one’s 
head in one’s own establishment, and let to ride the high 
’oss over one roughshod like that 1” 

And Mr. WillOn, in his disgust at the equestrian con- 
tumely thus heaped on him, bit the straw savagely in two, 
and made an end of it, with a vindictive “Will yer be, 
quiet there : blow yer,” to the King, who was protesting 
with his heels against the conversation. 

“Come, then, no gammon,” growled his companion — 
the “cousin out o’ Yorkshire” of the keeper’s tree. 

“What’s yer figure you say?” relented Willon, medi- 
tatively. 

“ Two thousand to nothin’ — come 1 — can’t no hand- 
somer,” retorted the Yorkshire cousin, with the air of a 
man conscious of behaving very nobly. 

“For the race in Germany?” pursued Mr. Willon, still 
meditatively. 

“ Two thousand to nothin’ — come 1” reiterated the other, 
with his arms folded to intimate that this and nothing else 
was the figure to which he would bind himself. 

Willon chewed another bit of straw, glanced at the horse 
as though he were a human thing to hear, to witness, and 
to judge ; grew a little pale ; and stooped forward. 

“ Hush 1 Somebody’ll spy on us. It’s a bargain.” 

“ Done. And you’ll paint him, eh ?” 

“ Yes — I’ll — paint him.” 

The assent was very husky, and dragged slowly out, 
while his eyes glanced with a furtive, frightened glance 
over the loose-box. Then — still with that cringing, terri- 
fied look backward to the horse as an assassin may steal a 
glance before his deed at his unconscious victim — the head 

10 


110 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


groon* and bis comrade went out and closed the door of 
the loose-box and passed into the hot lowering summer 
night. 

Forest King, left in solitude, shook himself with a neigh ; 
took a refreshing roll in the straw, and turned with an ap- 
petite to his neglected gruel. Unhappily for himself, his 
fine instincts could not teach him the conspiracy that lay 
in wait for him and his ; and the gallant beast, content to 
be alone, soon slept the sleep of the righteous. 


CHAPTER VIII. 

A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE. 

“ Seraph — I’ve been thinking ” — said Cecil, musingly, 
as they paced homeward together from the Scrubs, with 
the long line of the First Life stretching before and be- 
hind their chargers, and the bands of the Household Cav- 
alry playing mellowly in their rear. 

“ You don’t mean it. Never let it ooze out, Beauty; 
you’ll ruin your reputation 1” 

Cecil laughed a little, very languidly; to have been in 
the sun for four hours, in full harness, had almost taken 
out of him any power to be amused at anything. 

“ I’ve been thinking,” he went on undisturbed, pulling 
down his chin-scale. “ What’s a fellow to do when he’s 
smashed ?” 

“ Eh ?” The Seraph couldn’t offer a suggestion ; he had 
a vague idea that men who were smashed never did do 
anything except accept the smashing ; unless, indeed, they 
turned up afterward as touts, of which he had an equally 
vague suspicion. 

“ What do they do ?” pursued Bertie. 

“ Go to the bad,” finally suggested the Seraph, lighting 
a great cigar, without heeding the presence of the Duke, a 
Field-Marshal, and a Serene Highness far on in front. 

Cecil shook his head. 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE. 


Ill 


“ Can’t go where they are already. I’ve been thinking 
what a fellow might do that was up a tree ; and on my 
honor there are lots of things one might turn to ” 

“Well, I suppose there are,” assented the Seraph, with 
a shake of his superb limbs in his saddle, till his cuirass 
and chains and scabbard rang again. “/ should try the 
P.R., only they will have you train.” 

“ One might do better than the P.R. Getting yourself 
into prime condition, only to be pounded out of condition 
and into a jelly, seems hardly logical or satisfactory — spe- 
cially to your looking-glass, though, of course, it’s a mat- 
ter of taste. But now, if I had a cropper, and got sold 
up ” 

“You, Beauty?” The Seraph puffed a giant puff of 
amazement from his Havanna, opening his blue eyes to 
their widest. 

“Possible!” returned Bertie, serenely, with a noncha- 
lant twist to his moustaches. “Anything’s possible. If I 
do now, it strikes me there are vast fields open.” 

“ Gold fields ?” suggested the Seraph, wholly bewil- 
dered — 

“Gold fields ? No ! I mean a field for — what d’ye call 
it — genius. Now, look here; nine-tenths of creatures in 
this world don’t know how to put on a glove. It’s an art, 
and an art that requires long study. If a few of us were 
to turn glove-fitters when we are fairly crashed, we might 
civilize the whole world, and prevent the deformity of an 
ill-fitting glove ever blotting creation and prostituting 
Houbigant. What do you say ?” 

“ Don’t be such a donkey, Beauty,” laughed the Seraph, 
while his charger threatened to passage into an oyster-cart. 

“You don’t appreciate the majesty of great plans,” re- 
joined Beauty, reprovingly. “ There’s an immense deal in 
what I’m saying. Think what we might do for society, — 
think how we might extinguish snobbery, if we just dedi- 
cated our smash to Mankind. We might open a College, 
where the traders might go through a course of polite 
training before they blossomed out as millionaires ; the 
world would be spared an agony of dropped h’s and bad 
bows. We might have a Bureau where we registered all 
our social experiences, and gave' the Plutocracy a map of 


112 


UNDER TWO FLAOS. 


Belgravia, with all the pitfalls marked, all the inaccessible 
heights colored red, and all the hard-up great people dot- 
ted with gold to show the amount they’d be bought for, 
with directions to the ignoramuses whom to know, court, 
and avoid. We might form a Courier Company, and take 
Brummagen abroad under our guidance, so that the Con- 
tinent should’nt think Englishwomen always wear blue 
veils and gray shawls, and hear every Englishman shout 
for porter and beefsteak in Tortoni’s. We might teach 
them to take their hats off to women, and not to prod pic- 
tures with sticks, and to look at statues without poking 
them with an umbrella, and to be persuaded that all for- 
eigners don’t want to be bawled at, and won’t understand 
bad French any the better for its being shouted. Or we 
might have a Joint-Stock Toilette Association, for the 
purposes of national art, and receive Brummagen to show 
it how to dress ; we might even succeed in making the 
feminine British Public drape itself properly, and the B.P. 
masculine wear boots that won’t creak, and coats that don’t 
wrinkle, and take off its hat without a jerk, as though it 
were a wooden puppet hung on very stiff strings. Or one 
might ” 

** Talk the greatest nonsense under the sun !” laughed 
the Seraph. “ For mercy’s sake, are you mad, Bertie ?” 

“ Inevitable question addressed to Genius I” yawned 
Cecil. “ I’m showing you plans that might teach a whole 
nation good style if we just threw ourselves into it a little. 
I don’t mean you , because you’ll never smash, and one 
don’t turn bear-leader, even.to the B. P., without the pri- 
mary impulse of being hard-up. And I don’t talk for 
myself, because, when I go to the dogs, I have my own 
project.” 

“ And what’s that ?” 

“ To be groom of the chambers at Meurice’s or Cla- 
ridge’s,” responded Bertie, solemnly. “ Those sublime crea- 
tures with their silver chains round their necks and their in 
effable supremacy over every other mortal ! — one would 
feel in a superior region still. And when a snob came to 
poison the air, how exquisitely one could annihilate him 
with showing him his ignorance of claret ; and when an 
epicure dined, how delightfully, as one carried in a tnrbot, 


. A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR HE LA LUNE. 113 

one could test him with the eprouvette positive , or crush 
him by the eprouvette negative. We have been Equerries 
at the Palace, both of us, but I don’t think we know what 
true dignity is till we shall have risen to head-waiters at a 
Grand Hotel.” 

With which Bertie let his charger pace onward, while 
he reflected thoughtfully on his future state. The Seraph 
laughed till he almost swayed out of saddle, but he shook 
himself into his balance again with another clash of his 
brilliant harness, while his eyes lightened and glanced witt/ 
a fiery gleam down the line of the Household Cavalry. 

“ Well, if I went to the dogs, I wouldn’t go to Grand 
Hotels, but I’ll tell you where I would go, Beauty.” 

“ Where’s that ?” 

“Into hot service, somewhere. By Jove, I’d see some 
good fighting under another flag — out in Algeria, there, 
or with the Poles, or after Garibaldi. I would, in a day 
— I’m not sure I won’t now, and I bet you ten to one the 
life would be better than this.” 

Which was ungrateful in the Seraph, for his happy tem- 
per made him the sunniest and most conteuted of men, 
with no cross in his life save the dread that somebody 
would manage to marry him some day. But Bock had the 
true dash and true steel of the soldier in him, and his blue 
eyes flashed over his Guards as he spoke, with a longing 
wish that he were leading them on to a charge instead of 
pacing with them toward Hyde Park. 

Cecil turned in his saddle and looked at him with a cer- 
tain wonder and pleasure in his glance, and did not an- 
swer aloud. “ The deuce — that’s not a bad idea,” he 
thought to himself ; and the idea took root and grew with 
him. 

Far down, very far down, so far that nobody had ever 
seen it, nor himself ever expected it, there was a lurking 
instinct in “ Beauty,” — the instinct that had prompted him, 
when he sent the King at the Grand Military cracker, with 
that prayer, “ Kill me if you like, but don’t fail me 1” — 
which, out of the languor and pleasure-loving temper of 
his unruffled life, had a vague, restless impulse toward the 
fiery perils and nervous excitement of a sterner and more 
stirring career. 

H 10* 


114 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


It was only vague, for he was naturally very indolent, 
very gentle, very addicted to taking all things passively, 
and very strongly of persuasion that to rouse yourself for 
anything was a niaiserie of the strongest possible folly ; 
but it was there. It always is there with men of Bertie’s 
order, and only comes to light when the match of danger 
is applied to the touchhole. Then, though “the Tenth 
don’t dance,” perhaps, with graceful indolent dandy inso- 
lence, they can fight as no others fight when Boot and 
^Saddle rings through the morning air, and the slashing 
charge sweeps down with lightning speed and falcon 
swoop. 

“In the case of a Countess, sir, the imagination is more 
excited,” says Dr. Johnson, who had, I suppose, little op- 
portunity of putting that doctrine for amatory intrigues 
to the test in actual practice. Bertie, who had many op- 
portunities, differed with him. He found love-making in 
his own polished tranquil circles apt to become a little 
dull, and was more amused by Laura Lelas. However, 
he was sworn to the service of the Guenevere, and he 
drove his mail-phaeton down that day to another sort of 
Richmond dinner, of which the lady was the object in- 
stead of the Zu-Zu. 

She enjoyed thinking herself the wife of a jealous and 
inexorable lord, and arranged her flirtations to evade him 
with a degree of skill so great, that it was lamentable it 
should be thrown away on an agricultural husband, who 
never dreamt that the “ Fidelio — III — TstnegeR,” which 
met his eyes in the innocent face of his Times referred to 
an appointment at a Regent Street modiste’s, or that the 
advertisement — “ White wins — Twelve,” meant that if she 
wore white camellias in her hair at the opera, she would 
give “Beauty” a meeting after it. 

Lady Guenevere was very scrupulous never to violate 

conventionalities. And yet she was a little fast very 

fast, indeed, and was a queen of one of the fastest sets; 
but then — 0 sacred, shield of a wife’s virtue — she could 
not have borne to lose her very admirable position, her 
very magnificent jointure, and, above all, the superb Gu- 
enevere diamonds ! 

I don’t know anything that will secure a husband from 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE. 


115 


an infidelity so well as very fine family jewels, when such 
an infidelity would deprive his wife of them forever 
Many women will leave their homes, their lords, their 
children, and their good name; if the fancy take them ; 
but there is not one in a million who will so far forget her- 
self as to sever from pure rose-diamonds. 

So, for sake of the diamonds, she and Bertie had their 
rendezvous under the rose. 

This day she went down to see a dowager Baroness 
aunt, out at Hampton Court — really went : she was never 
so imprudent as to falsify her word, and with the Dowager, 
who was very deaf and purblind, dined at Richmond, while 
the world thought her dining at Hampton Court. It was 
nothing to any one, since none knew it to gossip about, 
that Cecil joined her there : that over the Star and Garter 
repast they arranged their meeting at Baden next month : 
that while the Baroness dozed over the grapes and peaches 
— she had been a beauty herself, in her own day, and 
still had her sympathies — they went on the river, in the 
little toy that he kept there for his fair friends’ use, floating 
slowly along in the coolness of evening, while the stars 
loomed out in the golden trail of the sunset, and doing a 
graceful scene & la Musset and Meredith, with a certain 
languid amusement in the assumption of those poetic 
guises, for they were of the world worldly ; and neither 
believed very much in the other. 

When you have just dined well, and there has been no 
fault in the clarets, and the scene is pretty, if it be not the 
Kile in the after-glow, the Arno in the moonlight, or the 
Loire in vintage-time, but only the Thames above- Rich- 
mond, it is the easiest thing in the world to feel a touch 
of sentiment when you have a beautiful woman beside you 
who expects you to feel it. The evening was very hot 
and soft. There was a low south wind, the water made a 
pleasant murmur, wending among its sedges. She w r as 
very lovely, moreover, lying back there among her laces 
and Indian shawls, with the sunset in* the brown depths of 
her eyes and on her delicate cheek. And Bertie, as he 
looked on his liege lady, really had a glow of the old, real, 
foolish, forgotten feeling stir at his heart, as he gazed on 
her in the half-light, and thought, almost wistfully, “ If 


116 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the Jews were down on me to-morrow, would she realty 
care, I wonder ?” 

Really care ? Bertie knew his world and its women too 
well to deceive himself in his heart about the answer. 
Nevertheless, he asked the question. “Would you care 
much, cliere belle ?” 

“Care what?” 

“If I came to grief, — went to the bad, you know; 
dropped out of the world altogether.” 

She raised her splendid eyes in amaze, with a delicate 
shudder through all her laces. “ Bertie 1 you would break 
my heart 1 What can you dream of?” 

“ Oh, lots of us end so. How is a man to end ?” an- 
swered Bertie, philosophically, while his thoughts still ran 
off in a speculative skepticism. “Is there a heart to 
break?” 

Her ladyship looked at him, and laughed. 

“ A Wcrter in the Guards ! I don’t think the role will 
suit either you or your corps, Bertie ; but if you do it, 
pray do it artistically. I remember, last year, driving 
through Asnieres, when they had found a young man in 
the Seine ; he was very handsome, beautifully dressed, and 
he held fast in his clinched hand a gold lock of hair. Now, 
there was a man who knew how to die gracefully, and 
make his death an idyl 1” 

“Died for a woman ? — ah 1” murmured Bertie, with the 
Brummel nonchalance of his order. “ I don’t think I 
should do that, even for you, — not, at least, while I had a 
cigar left.” 

And- then the boat drifted backward, while the stars 
grew brighter and the last reflection of the sun died out ; 
and they planned to meet to-morrow, and talked of Baden, 
and sketched projects for the winter in Paris, and went in 
and sat by the window, taking their coffee, and feeling, in 
a half vague pleasure, the heliotrope-scented air blowing 
softly in from the garden below, and the quiet of the star- 
lit river in the summer evening, with a white sail gleam- 
ing here and there, or the gentle splash of an oar follow- 
ing on the swift trail of a steamer : the quiet, so still and 
so strange after the crowded rush of the London season. 

“Would she really care?” thought Cecil, once moro. 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE. lit 

In that moment he could have wished to think she 
would. 

But heliotrope, stars, and a river, even though it had 
been tawny and classical Tiber instead of ill-used and in- 
odorous Thames, were not things sufficiently in the way of 
either of them to detain them long. They had both seen 
the Babylonian sun set over the ruins of the Birs Nimrud, 
and had talked of Paris fashions while they did so ; they 
had both leaned over the terraces of Bellosguardo, while 
the moon was full on Giotto’s tower, and had discussed 
their dresses for the Yeglione masquerade. It was not 
their style to care for these matters ; they were pretty, to 
bo sure, but they had seen so many of them. 

The Dowager went home in her brougham ; the Countess 
drove in his mail-phaeton, objectionable, as she might be 
seen, but less objectionable than letting her servants know 
he had met her at Richmond. Besides, she obviated dan- 
ger by bidding him set her down at a little villa across the 
park, where dwelt a confidential protegee of hers, whom 
she patronized ; a former French governess, married tol- 
erably well, who had the Countess’s confidences, and kept 
them religiously for sake of so aristocratic a patron, and 
of innumerable reversions of Spanish point and shawls 
that had never been worn, and rings, of which her lavish 
ladyship had got tired. 

From here, she would take her ex-governess’s little 
brougham, and get quietly back to her own house in Eaton 
Square in due time for all the drums and crushes at which 
she must make her appearance. This was the sort of little 
devices which really made them think themselves in love, 
and gave the salt to the whole affair. Moreover, there was 
this ground for it, that had her lord once roused from the 
straw-yards of his prize cattle, there was a certain stubborn, 
irrational, old-world prejudice of pride and temper in him 
that would have made him throw expediency to the winds, 
then and there, with a blind and brutal disregard to slander 
and to the fact that none would ever adorn his diamonds 
as she did. So that Cecil had not only her fair fame, but 
her still more valuable jewels in his keeping when he started 
from the Star and Garter in the warmth of the bright sum- 
mer’s evening. 


118 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


It was a lovely night ; a night for lonely highland tarns, 
and southern shores by Bairn ; without a cloud to veil the 
brightness of the stars ; a heavy dew pressed the odors 
from the grasses, and the deep glades of the avenues were 
pierced here and there with a broad beam of silvery moon- 
light, slanting through the massive boles of the trees, and 
falling white and serene across the turf. Through the park, 
with the gleam of the water ever and again shining through 
the branches of the foliage, Cecil started his horses ; his 
groom he had sent away on reaching Richmond, for the 
same reason as the Countess had dismissed her barouche, 
and he wanted no servant, since, as soon as he had set 
down his liege lady at her protegee’s, he would drive 
straight back to Piccadilly. But he had not noticed what 
he noted now, that instead of one of his carriage-grays, 
who had fallen slightly lame, they had put into harness the 
young one, Maraschino, who matched admirably for size 
and color, but who, being really a hunter, though he had 
been broken to shafts as well, was not the horse with which 
to risk driving a lady. 

However, Beauty was a perfect whip, and had the pair 
perfectly in hand, so that he thought no more of the change, 
as the grays dashed at a liberal half-speed through the park, 
with their harness flashing in the moonlight, and their scar- 
let rosettes fluttering in the pleasant air. The eyes beside 
him, the Titian-like mouth, the rich, delicate cheek, these 
were, to be sure, rather against the coolness and science 
that such a five-year-okl as Maraschino required ; they 
were distracting even to Cecil, and he had not prudence 
enough to deny his sovereign lady when she put her hands 
on the ribbons. 

“ The beauties 1 give them to me, Bertie. Dangerous ? 
How absurd you are ; as if I could not drive anything! 
Do you remember my four roans at Longchamps ?” 

She could, indeed, with justice, pique herself on her skill ; 
she drove matchlessly, but as he resigned them to her, 
Maraschino and his companion quickened their trot, and 
tossed their pretty thoroughbred heads, conscious of a less 
powerful hand on the reins. 

“ I shall let their pace out, there is nobody to run over 
here,” said her ladyship. “ VoA ’ en done mon beau mon- 
sieur” 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE 


119 


Maraschino, as though hearing the flattering conjuration, 
swung off into a light, quick canter, and tossed his head 
again ; he knew that, good whip though she was, he could 
jerk his mouth free in a second if he wanted. Cecil laughed, 
prudence was at no time his virtue, and leant back con- 
tentedly, to be driven at a slashing pace through the balmy 
summer’s night, while the ring of the hoofs rang merrily 
on the turf, and the boughs were tossed aside with a dewy 
fragrance. As they went, the moonlight was shed about their 
path in the full of the young night, and at the end of a vista 
of boughs, on a grassy knoll were some phantom forms, the 
same graceful shapes that stand out against the purple 
heather and the tawny gorse of Scottish moorlands, while 
the lean rifle-tube creeps up by stealth. In the clear star- 
light there stood the deer, a dozen of them, a clan of stags 
alone, with their antlers clashing like the clash of swords, 
and waving like swaying banners as they tossed their heads 
and listened.* 

In an instant the hunter pricked his ears, snuffed the air 
and twitched with passionate impatience at his bit; — 
another instant and he had got his head, and launching 
into a sweeping gallop rushed down the glade. 

Cecil sprang forward from his lazy rest, and seized the 
ribbons that in one instant had cut his companion’s gloves 
to stripes. 

“ Sit still,” he said calmly, but under his breath. “ Ho 
has been always ridden with the Buck-hounds; he will race 
the deer as sure as we live I” 

Race the deer he did. 

Startled, and fresh for their favorite nightly wandering, 
the stags were off like the wind at the noise of alarm, and 
the horses tore after them ; no skill, no strength, no sci- 
ence, could avail to pull them in, they had taken their bits 


* Let me here take leave to beg pardon of the gallant Highland 
stags for comparing them one instant with the shabby, miserable- 
looking wretches that travesty them in Richmond Park. After 
seeing these latter scrubby, meager apologies for deer, one wonders 
why something better cannot be turned loose there. A hunting- 
mare I know well, nevertheless flattered them thus by racing them 
through the park ; when in harness herself to her own great dis- 
gust. 


120 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


between their teeth, and the devil that was in Maraschino 
lent the contagion of sympathy to the young carriage mare, 
who had never gone at such a pace since she had been first 
put in her break. 

Neither Cecil’s hands nor any other force could stop 
them now ; on they went, hunting as straight in line as 
though staghounds streamed in front of them, and no 
phaeton rocked and swayed in a dead and dragging weight 
behind them. In a moment he gauged the closeness and 
the vastness of the peril ; there was nothing for it but to 
trust to chance, to keep his grasp on the reins to the last, 
and to watch for the first sign of exhaustion. Long ere 
that should be given death might have come to them both ; 
but there was a gay excitation in that headlong rush 
through the summer night, there was a champagne-draught 
of mirth and mischief in that dash through the starlit wood- 
land, there was a reckless, breathless pleasure in that neck- 
or-nothing moonlight chase ! 

Yet danger was so near with every oscillation ; the deer 
were trooping in fast flight, now clear in the moonlight, 
now lost in the shadow, bounding with their lightning 
grace over sward and hillock, over briar and brushwood, 
at that speed which kills most living things that dare to 
race the “ Monarch of the Glens.” And the grays were in 
full pursuit ; the hunting fire was in the fresh young horse ; 
he saw the shadowy branches of the antlers toss before him, 
and he knew no better than to hunt down in their scenting 
line as hotly as though the field of the Queen’s or the 
Baron’s was after them. What cared he for the phaeton 
that rocked and reeled on his traces, he felt its weight no 
more than if it were a wicker-work toy, and extended like 
- a greyhound he swerved from the road, swept through the 
trees, and tore down across the grassland in the track of 
the herd. 

Through the great boles of the trunks, bronze and black 
in the shadows, across the hilly rises of the turf, through 
the brushwood pell-mell, and crash across thelevel stretches 
of the sward, they raced as though the hounds were stream- 
ing in front ; swerved here, tossed there, carried in a whirl- 
wind over the mounds, wheeled through the gloom of the 
woven branches, splashed with a hiss through the shallow 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE. 


121 


rain-pools, shot swift as an arrow across the silver radiance 
of the broad moonlight, borne against the sweet south 
wind, and down the odors of the trampled grass, the car- 
riage was hurled across the park in the wild starlight chase. 
It rocked, it swayed, it shook, at every yard, while it was 
carried on like a paper toy ; as yet the marvelous chances 
of accident had borne it clear of the destruction that 
threatened it at every step as the grays, in the height of 
their pace now, and powerless even to have arrested them- 
selves, flew through the woodland, neither knowing what 
they did, nor heeding where they went ; but racing down 
on the scent, not feeling the strain of the traces, and only 
maddened the more by the noise of the whirling wheels 
behind them. 

As Cecil leaned back, his hands clinched on the reins, 
his sinews stretched almost to bursting in their vain strug- 
gle to recover power over the loosened beasts, the hunting 
zest woke in him too, even while his eyes glanced on his 
companion in fear and anxiety for her. 

“ Tally-ho I hark forward 1 As I live it is glorious 1” 
he cried, half unconsciously. “ For God’s sake sit still, 
Beatrice I I will save you.” 

Inconsistent as the words were, they were true to what 
he felt : alone, he would have flung himself delightedly 
into the madness of the chase, for her he dreaded with 
horror the eminence of their peril. 

On fled the deer, on swept the horses ; faster in the 
gleam of the moonlight the antlered troop darted on 
through the gloaming; faster tore the grays in the ecstasy 
of their freedom ; headlong and heedless they dashed 
through the thickness of leaves and the weaving of 
branches ; neck to neck straining to distance each other, 
and held together by the gall of the harness. The broken 
boughs snapped, the earth flew up beneath their hoofs, 
their feet struck scarlet sparks of fire from the stones, the 
carriage was whirled, rocking and tottering, through the 
maze of tree-trunks, towering like pillars of black stone 
up against the steel-blue clearness of the sky. The strain 
was intense; the danger deadly: suddenly, straight ahead, 
beyond the darkness of the foliage, gleamed a line of light ; 
shimmering, liquid, and glassy, here brown as gloom whero 


122 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the shadows fell on it, here light as life where the stars 
mirrored on it. That trembling line stretched right in their 
path. For the first time from the blanched lips beside him 
a cry of terror rang. 

“ The river ! — oh, heaven ! — the river !” 

There it lay in the distance, the deep and yellow water, 
cold in the moon’s rays, with its farther bank but a dull 
gray line in the mists that rose from it, and its swamp a 
yawning grave, as the horses, blind in their delirium, and 
racing against each other, bore down through all obstacles 
toward its brink. Death was rarely ever closer ; one score 
yards more, one plunge, one crash down the declivity and 
against the rails, one swell of the noisome tide above their 
heads, and life would be closed and passed for both of 
them. For one breathless moment his eyes met hers, — in 
that moment he loved her, in that moment their hearts 
beat with a truer, fonder impulse to each other than they 
had ever done. Before the presence of a threatening death 
life grows real, love grows precious, to the coldest and most 
careless. 

No aid could come; not a living soul was nigh; the soli- 
tude was as complete as though a western prairie stretched 
around them ; there were only the still and shadowy night, 
the chilly silence, on which the beat of the plunging hoofs 
shattered like thunder, and the glisten of the flowing water 
growing nearer and nearer every yard. The tranquillity 
around only jarred more horribly on ear and brain; the 
vanishing forms of the antlered deer only gave a weirder 
grace to the moonlight-chase whose goal was the grave. 
It was like the midnight hunt after Herne the Hunter ; 
but here, behind them, hunted Death. 

The animals neither saw nor knew what waited them, as 
they rushed down on to the broad, gray stream, veiled from 
them by the slope and the screen of flickering leaves ; to 
save them there was but one chance, and that so desperate 
that it looked like madness. It was but a second’s thought ; 
he gave it but a second’s resolve. 

The next instant he stood on his feet, as the carriage 
swayed to and fro over the turf, balanced himself marvel- 
ously as it staggered in that furious gallop from side to 
side, clinched the reins hard in the grip of his teeth, meas- 


A STAG HUNT AU CLAIR HE LA LUNE. 123 

ured the distance with an unerring eye, and crouching his 
body for the spring with all the science of the old playing- 
fields of his Eton days, cleared the dash-board and lighted 
astride on the back of the hunting five-year old ; — how, he 
could never have remembered, or have told. 

The tremendous pace at which they went swayed him 
with a lurch and a reel over the off-side ; a woman’s cry 
rang again, clear, and shrill, and agonized on the night ; a 
moment more, and he would have fallen head downward 
beneath the horses’ feet. But he had ridden stirrup-less 
and saddle-less ere now ; he recovered himself with the 
suppleness of an Arab, and firm-seated behind the collar, 
with one leg crushed between the pole and Maraschino’s 
flanks, gathering in the ribbons till they were tight-drawn as 
a bridle, he strained with all the might and sinew that were 
in him to get the grays in hand before they could plunge 
down into the water. His wrists were wrenched like pul- 
leys, the resistance against him was hard as iron, but as he 
had risked life and limb in the leap which had seated him 
across the harnessed loins of the now terrified beast, so he 
risked them afresh to get the mastery now ; to slacken 
them, turn them ever so slightly, and save the woman he 
loved — loved, at least in this hour, as he had not loved her 
before. One moment more, while the half-maddened beasts 
rushed through the shadows ; one moment more, till the 
river stretched full before them in all its length and breadth, 
without a living thing upon its surface to break the still 
and awful calm ; one moment — and the force of cool com- 
mand conquered and broke their wills despite themselves. 
The hunter knew his master’s voice, his touch, his pres- 
sure, and slackened speed by an irresistible, almost un- 
conscious habit of obedience ; the carriage mare, checked 
and galled in the full height of her speed, stood erect, 
pawing the air with her forelegs, and flinging the white 
froth over her withers, while she plunged blindly in her 
nervous terror ; then with a crash, her feet came down upon 
the ground, the broken harness shivered together with a 
sharp, metallic clash ; snorting, panting, quivering, trem- 
bling, the pair stood passive and vanquished. 

The carriage was overthrown ; but the high and fearless 
courage of the peeress bore her unharmed, even as she was 


124 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


flung out on to the yielding fern-grown turf; fair as she 
was in every hour, she had never looked fairer than as he 
swung himself from the now powerless horses and threw 
himself beside her. 

“ My love — my love, you are saved 1” 

The beautiful eyes looked up half unconscious ; the 
danger told on her now that it was passed, as it does most 
commonly with women. 

“ Saved 1 — lost ! All the world must know, now, that 
you are with me this evening,” she murmured with a shud- 
der ; she lived for the world, and her first thought was of 
self. 

He soothed her tenderly. 

“ Hush — be at rest. There is no injury but what I can 
repair, nor is there a creature in sight to have witnessed 
the accident. Trust in me ; no one shall ever know of this. 
You shall reach town safely and alone.” 

And while he promised, he forgot that he thus pledged 
his honor to leave four hours of his life so buried that, 
however much he needed, he neither should nor could 
account for them. 


CHAPTER IX. 

THE PAINTED BIT. 

Baden was at its brightest. The Victoria, the Badischer 
Hof, the Stephanie Bauer were crowded. The Kurliste had 
a dazzling string of names. Imperial grandeur sauntered 
in slippers, chiefs used to be saluted with “Ave Caesar Im- 
perator,” smoked a papelito in peace over Galignani. 
Emperors gave a good-day to ministers who made their 
thrones beds of thorns, and little kings elbowed great cap- 
italists who could have bought them all up in a morning’s 
work in the money market. Statecraft was in its slippers, 
and diplomacy in its dressing-gown. Statesmen who had 
just been outwitting each other at the hazard of European 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


12h 

politics, laughed good-humoredly as they laid their gold 
down on the color. Rivals who had lately been quarrel- 
ing over the knotty points of national frontiers now only 
vied for a twenty-franc rosebud from the bouquetiere. 
Knights of the Garter and Knights of the Golden Fleece, 
who had hated each other to deadliest rancor with the 
length of the Continent between them, got friends over a 
mutually good book on the Rastadt or Foret Noir. Brains 
that were the powder depot of one-half of the universe 
let themselves be lulled with the monotone of “ Faites 
voire jeul ” or fanned to tranquil amusement by a fair 
idiot’s coquetry. And lips that, with a whisper, could 
loosen the coursing slips of the wild hell-dogs of war, mur- 
mured love to a princess, led the laugh at a supper at five 
in the morning, or smiled over their own caricatures done 
by Tennicl or Cham. 

Baden was full. The supreme empires of demi-monde 
sent their sovereigns diamond-crowned and resistless to 
outshine all other principalities and powers, while in 
breadth of marvelous skirts, in costliness of cobweb laces, 
in unapproachability of Indian shawls, and gold embroide- 
ries, and mad fantasies and Cleopatra extravagances, and 
jewels fit for a Maharajah, the Zu-Zu was distanced by 
none. 

Among the kings and heroes and celebrities who gath- 
ered under the pleasant shadow of the pine-crowned hills, 
there was not one in his way greater than the steeple- 
chaser, Forest King — certes, there was not one half so 
honest. 

The Guards’ Crack was entered for the Prix de Dames, 
the sole represertative of England. There were two or 
three good things out of French stables, specially a killing 
little bay L’Etoile, and there was an Irish sorrel, the prop- 
erty of an Austrian of rank, of which fair things were 
whispered ; but it was scarcely possible that anything could 
stand against the King, and that wonderful stride of his 
which spread-eagled his field like magic, and his country- 
men were well content to leave their honor and their old 
renown to “Beauty” and his six-year old. 

Beauty himself, with a characteristic philosophy, had a 
sort of conviction that the German race would set e very - 
11 * 


126 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


thing square. lie stood either to make a very good thing 
on it, or to be very heavily hit. There could be no me- 
dium. He never hedged in his life ; and as it was almost 
a practical impossibility that anything the foreign stables 
could get together would even be able to land within half 
a dozen lengths of the King, Cecil, always willing to console 
himself, and invariably too careless to take the chance of 
adverse accident into account, had come to Baden, and was 
amusing himself there dropping a Freiderich d’Or on the 
rouge, flirting in the shady alleys of the Lichtenthal, waltz- 
ing Lady Guenevere down the ball-room, playing £carte 
with some Serene Highness, supping with the Zu-Zu and 
her set, and occupying rooms that a Russian Prince had 
had before him, with all the serenity of a millionaire, as far 
as memory of money went. With much more than the 
serenity.in other matters of most millionaires, who, finding 
themselves uncommonly ill at ease in the pot-pourri of 
monarchs and ministers, of beau-monde and demi-monde, 
would have given half their newly-turned thousands to get 
rid of the odor of Capel Court and the Bourse, and to 
attain the calm, negligent assurance, the easy, tranquil in- 
solence, the nonchalance with Princes, and the supremacy 
among the Free Lances, which they saw and coveted in 
the indolent Guardsman. 

Bertie amused himself. He might be within a day of 
his ruin, but that was no reason why he should not sip his 
iced sherbet and laugh with a pretty French actress to- 
night. His epicurean formulary was the same as old Her- 
ricks, and he would have paraphrased this poet’s famous 
quatrain into 

Drink a pure claret while you may, 

Your “ stiff” is still a flying ; 

And he who dines so well to-day 
To-morrow may bo lying, 

Pounced down upon by Jews tout net, 

Or outlawed in a French guinguette! 

Bertie was a great believer — if the words are not too 
sonorous and too earnest to be applied to his very incon- 
sequent views upon any and everything — in the philoso- 
phy of happy accident. Far as it was in him to have a 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


127 


conviction at all, which was a thorough-going serious sort 
of thing not by any means his “ form,” he had a conviction 
that the doctrine of “Eat, drink, and enjoy, for to-morrow 
we die,” was an universal panacea. He was reckless to 
the uttermost stretch of recklessness, all serene and quiet, 
though his pococurantism and his daily manner were ; 
and while subdued to the undeviating monotone and lan- 
guor of his peculiar set in all his temper and habits, the 
natural dare-devil in him took out its inborn instincts 
in a wildly careless and gamester-like imprudence with that 
most touchy-tempered and inconsistent of all coquettes — 
Fortune. 

Things, he thought, could not well be worse with him 
than they were now. So he piled all on one coup , and 
stood to be sunk or saved by the Prix de Dames. Mean- 
while, all the same, he murmured Mussetism to the Guene- 
vere under the ruins of the Alte Schloss, lost or won a 
rouleau at the roulette-wheel, gave a bank note to the fa- 
mous Isabel for a tea-rose, drove the Zu-Zu four in hand to 
see the Flat races, took his guinea tickets for the Concerts, 
dined with Princes, lounged arm-in-arm with Grand Dukes, 
gave an Emperor a hint as to the best cigars, and charmed 
a Monarch by unfolding the secret of the aroma of a 
Guards’ Punch, sacred to the Household. 

“ Si on ne meurt pas de desespoir ou finitpar manger 
des huitres ,” said the witty Frenchwoman ; Bertie, who 
believed in bivalves but not in heroics, thought it best to 
take the oysters first, and eschew the despair entirely. 

He had one unchangeable quality — insouciance ; and he 
had, moreover, one unchangeable faith — the King. Lady 
Guenevere had reached home unnoticed after the accident 
of their moonlight stag-hunt. His brother meeting him a 
day or two after their interview, had nodded affirmatively, 
though sulkily, iu answer to his inquiries, and had mur- 
mured that it was “ all square now.” The Jews and the 
tradesmen had let him leave for Baden without more serious 
measures than a menace, more or less insolently worded. 
In the same fashion he trusted that the King’s running at 
the Bad, with the moneys he had on it, would set all things 
right for a little while, when, if his family interest, which 
was great, would get him his step in the First Life, ho 


128 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


thought, desperate as things were, they might come round 
again smoothly, without a notorious crash. 

“.You are sure the King will ‘stay/ Bertie?” asked 
Lady Guenevere, who had some hundreds in gloves (and 
even under the rose “ sported a pony” or so more seriously) 
on the event. 

“ Certain ! But if he don’t, I promise you as pretty a 
tableau as your Asnifcres one ; for your sake, I’ll make the 
finish as picturesque as possible ; wouldn’t it be well to 
give me a lock of hair in readiness?” 

Her ladyship laughed, and shook her head ; if a man 
killed himself she did not desire that her gracious name 
^should be entangled with the folly. 

“ No, I don’t do those things,” she said, with capti- 
vating waywardness. “ Besides, though the Oos looks cool 
and pleasant, I greatly doubt that under any pressure you 
would trouble it; suicides are too pronounced for your 
style, Bertie.” 

“At all events, a little morphia in one’s own rooms 
would be quieter, and better taste,” said Cecil, while he 
caught himself listlessly wondering, as he had wondered 
at Richmond, if this badinage were to turn into serious 
fact — how much would she care. 

“ May your sins be forgiven you !” cried Chesterfield, 
the apostle of training, as he and the Seraph came up to 
the table where Cecil and Cos Wentworth were break- 
fasting in the garden of the Stephanien on the race-day 
itself. “ Liqueurs, truffles, and every devilment under the 
sun ? — cold beef, and nothing to drink, Beauty, if you’ve 
any conscience left 1” 

“Never had a grain, dear boy, since I can remember,” 
murmured Bertie, apologetically. “You took all the raw- 
ness off me at Eton.” 

“ And you’ve been taking coffee in bed, I’ll swear ?” pur- 
sued the cross-examiner. 

“ What it he have ? Beauty’s condition can’t be upset 
by a little mocha, nor mine either,” said his universal de- 
fender ; and the Seraph shook his splendid limbs with a 
very pardonable vanity. 

“ Ruteroth trains; Ruteroth trains awfully,” put in Cos 
Wentworth, looking up out of a great silver flagon of 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


i25 


Badminton, with which he was ending his breakfast ; ana 
referring to the Austrian who was to ride the Paris favor- 
ite. 11 Remember him at La Marche last year, and the 
racing at Vincennes — didn’t take a thing that could make 
flesh — muscles like iron, you know — never touched a soda 
even ” 

“ I’ve traiued too,” said Bertie, submissively ; “ look how 
I’ve been waltzing ! There isn’t harder work than that 
for any fellow. A deuxtemps with the Duchess takes it 
out of you like any spin over the flat.” 

Ilis censurers laughed, but did not give in their point. 

“ You’ve run shocking risks, Beauty,” said Chesterfield ; 

“ the King’s in fine running-form, don’t say he isn’t ; but 
you’ve said scores of times what a dealpf riding he takes.' 
Now, can you tell us yourself that you’re in as hard con- 
dition as you were when you won the Military, eh ?” 

Cecil shook his head with a sigh : — 

“ I don’t think I am ; I’ve had things to try me, you 
see. There was that Verschoyle’s proposal. I did abso- f 
lutely think at one time she’d marry me before I could 
protest against it ! Then there was that shock to one’s 
whole nervous system, when that indigo man, who took 
Lady Laura’s house, asked us to dinner, and actually 
thought we should go ! — and there was a scene, you know, 
of all earthly horrors, when Mrs. Gervase was so near 
eloping with me, and Gervase cut up rough, instead of 
pitying me ; and then the field-days were so many, and so 
late into the season ; and I exhausted myself so at the 
Belvoir theatricals at Easter ; and I toiled so atrociously 
playing Almaviva at your place, Seraph — a private opera’s 
galley slave’s work! — and, altogether, I’ve had a good 
many things to pull me down siuce the winter,” concluded 
Bertie, with a plaintive self-condolence over his truffles. 

The rest of his condemning judges laughed, and passed 
the plea of sympathy; the Coldstreamer alone, remained 
censorious and untouched. 

“ Pull you down! You’ll never pull off the race if you 
sit drinking liquors all the morning,” growled that censor. 

“ Look at that !” 

Bertie glanced at the London telegram tossed across to 
him, sent from a private and confidential agent. 

I 


130 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Batting here — 2 to 1 on L’Etoile ; Irish Roan offered 
and taken freely. Slight decline in closing prices for the 
King ; getting on French bay rather heavily at midnight. 
Fancy there’s a commission out against the King. Looks 
suspicious.” Cecil shrugged his shoulders and raised his 
eyebrows a little. 

“All the better for us. Take all they’ll lay against me. 
It’s as good as our having a ‘Commission out;* and if 
any cads get one against us it can’t mean mischief, as it 
would with professional jocks.” 

“ Are you so sure of yourself, Beauty ?” 

Beauty shook his head repudiatingly. 

“Never am sure of anything, much less of myself; I’m 
a chameleon, a perfect chameleon !” 

“ Are you so sure of the King, then ?” 

“ My dear fellow, no ! I ask you in reason, how can I 
be sure of 'what isn’t proved? I like that country fellow 
the old story tells of, he believed in fifteen shillings because 
he’d once had it in his hand ; others, he’d heard, believed 
in a pound ; but, for his part, he didn’t, because he’d never 
seen it. Now that was a man who’d never commit him- 
self ; he might have had the Exchequer I I’m the same ; 
I believe, the King can win at a good many things because 
I’ve seen him do ’em ; but I can’t possibly tell whether he 
can get this, because I’ve never ridden him for it. I shall 
be able to tell you at three o’clock — but that you don’t 
care for ” 

And Bertie, exhausted with making such a lengthened 
exposition — the speeches he preferred were monosyllabic — 
completed his sins against training with a long draught of 
claret-cup. 

“ Then, what the devil do you mean by telling us to pile 
our pots on you ?” asked the outraged Coldstreamer with 
natural wrath. 

“ Faith is a beautiful sight I” said Bertie, with solem- 
nity. “ If Tm bowled over, you 1 11 be none the less sublime 
instances of heroic devotion ” 

“ Offered on the altar of the Jews 1” laughed the Seraph, 
as he turned him away from the breakfast-table by the 
shoulders. “ Thanks, Beauty ; I’ve 1 four figures’ on you, 
and you’ll be good enough to win them for me. Let’s 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


131 


nave a look at the King. They are just going to walk 
him over.” 

Cecil complied ; while he lounged away with the others 
to the stables, with a face of the most calm, gentle, weary 
indifference in the world, the thought crossed him for a 
second of how very near he was to the wind. The figures 
in his betting- book were to the tune of several thousands, 
one way or another. If he won this morning it would be 
all right, of course : if he lost — even Beauty, odd mix- 
ture of devil-may-care and languor though he was, felt his 
lips grow, for the moment, hot and cold by turns as he 
thought of that possible contingency. 

The King looked in splendid condition ; he knew well 
enough what was up again, knew what was meant by that 
extra sedulous dressing-down, that setting muzzle that had 
been buckled on him some nights previous, the limitation 
put to his drink, the careful trial spins in the gray of the 
mornings, the conclusive examination of his plates by a 
skillful hand ; he knew what was required of him, and a 
horse in nobler condition never stepped out in body cloth- 
ing, as he was ridden slowly down on to the plains of 
Iffesheim. The Austrian Dragoon, a Count and a Cham- 
berlain likewise, who was to ride his only possible rival, 
the French horse L’Etoile, pulled his tawny silken mous- 
taches, as he saw the great English hero come up the 
course, and muttered to himself, “ L 1 affaire est finie .” 
L’Etoile was a brilliant enough bay in his fashion, but 
Count Ruteroth knew the measure of his pace and powers 
too thoroughly to expect him to live against the strides 
of the Guards’ gray. 

‘‘My beauty, won’t you cut those German fellows down I” 
muttered Rake, the enthusiast, in the saddling inclosure. 
“As for those fools what go agin you, you’ll put them in 
a hole, and no mistake. French horse, indeed I Why, 
you’ll spread-eagle all them Mossoos’ and Meinherrs’ cattle 
in a brace of seconds ” 

Rake’s foe, the head groom, caught him up savagely. 

“Won’t you never learn decent breedin’ ? When we 
wins we wins on the quiet, and when we loses we loses as 
if we liked it ; all that brayin’, and flauntin’, and boastin’ 
is only fit for cads. The ’oss is in tip-top condition j let 
him show what he can cTo over furren ground.” 


132 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Lucky for him, then, that he hasn’t got you across the 
pigskin ; you’d rope him, I believe, as soon as look at him, 
if it was made worth your while,” retorted Rake, in caustic 
wrath; his science of repartee chiefly lay in a successful 
“plant,” and he was here uncomfortably conscious that his 
opponent was in the right of the argument, as he started 
through the throng to put his master into the “ shell” of 
the Shire-famous scarlet and white. 

“Tip-top condition, my boy — tip-top, and no mistake,” 
murmured Mr. Willon, for the edification of those around 
them as the saddle-girths were buckled on, and the Guards’ 
Crack stood the cynosure of every eye at Iffesheim. 

Then, in his capacity as head attendant on the hero, he 
directed the exercise-bridle to be taken off, and with bis 
own hands adjusted a new and handsome one, slung across 
his arm. 

“ ’Tis a’most a pity. ’Tis a’most a pity,” thought the 
worthy, as he put the curb on the King ; “ but I shouldn’t 
have been haggravated with that hinsolent soldiering chap. 
There, my boy, if you’ll win with a painted quid, I’m a 
Dutchman.” 

Forest King champed his bit between his teeth a little ; 
it tasted bitter; he tossed his head and licked it with his 
tongue impatiently ; the taste had got down his throat 
and he did not like its flavor : he turned his deep, lustrous 
eyes with a gentle patience on the Crowd about him as 
though asking them what was the matter with him. No 
one moved his bit ; the only person who could have had 
such authority was busily giving the last polish to his coat 
with a fine handkerchief — that glossy neck which had been 
so dusted many a time with the cobweb coronet-broidered 
handkerchiefs of great ladies — and his instincts, glorious 
as they were, were not wise enough to tell him to kick his 
head groom down, then and there, with one mortal blow, 
as his poisoner and betrayer. 

The King chafed under the taste of that “painted quid ;” 
he felt a nausea as he swallowed, and he turned his hand- 
some head with a strange, pathetic astonishment in his 
glance : at that moment a familiar hand stroked his mane, 
a familiar foot was put into his stirrup, Bertie threw him- 
self into saddle, the lightest weight that ever gentleman- 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


133 


rider rode, despite his six-foot length of limb. The King, 
at the well-known touch, the well-loved voice, pricked his 
delicate ears, quivered in all his frame with eager excita- 
tion, snuffed the air restlessly through his distended nos- 
trils, and felt every vein under his satin skin thrill and swell 
with pleasure ; he was all impatience, all power, all long- 
ing, vivid, intensity of life. If only that nausea would 
go 1 He felt a restless sickliness stealing on him that his 
young and gallant strength had never known since he was 
foaled. But it was not in the King to yield to a little ; 
he flung his head up, champing angrily at the bit, then 
walked down to the starting-post with his old calm, col- 
lected grace ; and Cecil, looking at the glossy bow of the 
neck, and feeling the width of the magnilicent ribs beneath 
him, stooped from his saddle a second as he rode out of 
the inclosure and bent to the Seraph. 

“ Look at him, Rock I the thing’s as good as won.” 

The day was very warm and brilliant ; all Baden had 
come down to the race-course, continuous strings of car- 
riages, with their four or six horses and postillions, held 
the line far down over the plains; mob, there was none, 
save of women in matchless toilets, and men with the 
highest names in the “Almanac de Gotha the sun shone 
cloudlessly on the broad, green plateau of Iffesheim, on 
the white amphitheater of chalk hills, and on the glitter- 
ing, silken folds of the flags of England, France, Prussia, 
and of the Grand Duchy itself, that floated from the sum- 
mits of the Grand Stand, Pavilion, and Jockey Club. 

The ladies, descending from the carriages, swept up and 
down on the green course that was so free from “cads” 
and “ legs,” their magnilicent skirts trailing along without 
the risk of a grain of dust, their costly laces side by side 
with the Austrian uniforms of the military men from Ras- 
tadt. The betting was but slight; the Paris formulas, 
“ Combien contre l’Etoile ?” “ Six cents francs sur le che- 
val Anglais ?” echoing everywhere in odd contrast with 
the hubbub and striking clamor of English betting rings ; 
the only approach to anything like “ real business ” being 
transacted between the members of the Household and 
thoae of the Jockey Clubs. Ilfesheim was pure pleasure, 

12 


K14 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


like every other item of Baden existence, and all aristo- 
cratic, sparkling, rich, amnsement-seeking Europe seemed 
gathered there under the sunny skies, and on every one’s 
lips in the titled throng was but one name — Forest King’s. 
Even the coquettish bouquet-sellers, who remembered the 
dresses of his own colors which Cecil had given them last 
year when he had won the Rastadt, would sell nothing ex- 
cept little twin scarlet and white moss rosebuds, of which 
thousands were gathered and died that morning in honor 
of the English Guards’ champion. 

A slender event usually, the presence of the renowned 
crack of the Household Cavalry, made the Prix de Dames 
the most eagerly watched-for entry on the card, and the 
rest of the field were scarcely noticed as the well-known 
gold-broidered jacket came up at the starting-post. ^ 

The King saw that blaze of light and color over course 
and stands that he knew so well by the time; he felt the 
pressure round him of his foreign rivals as they reared and 
pulled and fretted and passaged ; the old longing quiv- 
ered in all his eager limbs, the old fire wakened in all his 
dauntless blood ; like the charger at sound of the trumpet- 
call, he lived in his past victories, and was athirst for more. 
But yet — between him and the sunny morning there seemed 
a dim, hazy screen ; on his delicate ear the familiar clangor 
smote with something dulled aud strange ; there seemed a 
numbness stealing down his frame, he shook his head in an 
unusual and irritated impatience, he did not know what 
ailed him. The hand he loved so loyally told him the 
work that was wanted of him, but he felt its guidance 
dully too, and the dry, hard, hot earth, as he struck it with 
his hoof, seemed to sway and heave beneath him ; the opi- 
ate had stolen into his veins, and was creeping stealthily 
and surely to the sagacious brain, and over the clear, bright 
senses. 

The signal for the start was given ; the first mad head- 
long rush broke away with the force of a pent-up torrent 
suddenly loosened ; every instinct of race and custom, and 
of that obedience which rendered him flexible as silk to his 
rider’s will, sent him forward with that stride which made 
the Guards’ Crack a household word in all the Shires. For 
a moment he shook himself clear of all his horses, and led 


THE PAINTED BIT. 


135 


off in the old grand sweeping canter before the French 
bay three lengths in the one single effort. 

Then into his eyes a terrible look of anguish came ; the 
numb and sickly nausea was upon him, his legs trembled, 
before his sight was a blurred whirling mist ; all the 
strength and force and mighty life within him felt ebbing 
out, yet he struggled bravely. He strained, he panted, he 
heard the thundering thud of the first flight gaining nearer 
and nearer upon him, he felt his rivals closing hotter and 
harder in on him, he felt the steam of his opponent’s 
smoking foam-dashed withers burn on his own flanks and 
shoulders, he felt the maddening pressure of a neck to 
neck struggle, he felt what in all his victorious life he had 
never known — the paralysis of defeat. 

The glittering throngs spreading over the plains gazed 
at him in the sheer stupor of amazement; they saw that 
the famous English hero was dead beat as any used-up 
knacker. 

One second more he strove to wrench himself through 
the throng of his horses, through the headlong crushing 
press, through — worst foe of all! — the misty darkness 
curtaining his sight ! one second more he tried to wrestle 
back the old life into his limbs, the unworn power and 
freshness into nerve and sinew. Then the darkness fell 
utterly; the mighty heart failed ; he could do no more ; — 
and his rider’s hand slackened and turned him gently back- 
ward, his rider’s voice sounded very low and quiet, to those 
who, seeing that every effort was hopeless, surged and clus- 
tered round his saddle. 

“ Something ails the King,” said Cecil, calmly; “he is 
fairly knocked off his legs. Some Yet must look to him ; 
ridden a yard farther he will fall.” 

Words so gently spoken ! — yet in the single minute that 
alone had passed since they had left the Starter’s Chair, a 
lifetime seemed to have been centered alike to Forest King 
and to his owner. 

The field swept on with a rush without the favorite ; and 
the Prix de Dames was won by the French bay L’Etoile. 


136 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER X. 

“PETITE BEINE.” 

When a ycung Prussian had shot himself the night be- 
fore for Roulette losses, the event had not thrilled, star- 
tled, and impressed the gay Baden gathering one tithe so 
gravely and so enduringly as did now the unaccountable 
failure of the great Guards’ Crack. 

Men could make nothing of it save the fact that there 
was “ something dark ” somewhere. The “ painted quid ” 
had done its work more thoroughly than Willon and the 
Welcher had intended; they had meant that the opiate 
should be just sufficient to make the favorite off his speed, 
but not to take effects so palpable as these. It was, how- 
ever, so deftly prepared, that under examination no trace 
could be found of it, and the results of veterinary investi- 
gation, while it left unremoved the conviction that the 
horse had been doctored, could not explain when or how, 
or by what medicines. Forest King had simply “broken 
down ;” favorites do this on the flat and over the furrow 
from an overstrain, from a railway journey, from a touch 
of cold, from a sudden decay of power, from spasm, or 
from vertigo ; those who lose by them may think what they 
will of “ roping,” or “ painting,” or “nobbling,” but what 
can they prove ? 

Even in the great scandals that come before the auto- 
crats of the Jockey Club, where the tampering is clearly 
known, can the matter ever be really proved and sifted ? 
Yery rarely: the trainer affects stolid unconsciousness or 
unimpeachable respectability the hapless stable-boy is 
cross-examined to protest innocence and ignorance, and 
most likely protest them rightly; he is accused, dismissed, 
and ruined ; or some young jock has a “ caution ” out every- 
where against him, and never again can get a mount even 
for the commonest handicap ; but as a rule, the real crimi- 


“PETITE reine.” 13 ? 

nals are never unearthed, and by consequence are never 
reached and punished. 

The Household, present and absent, were heavily hit; 
they cared little for the “ crushers ” they incurred, but their 
champion’s failure when he was in the face of Europe cut 
them down more terribly. The fame of the English riding- 
men had been trusted to Forest King and his owner, and 
they who had never before betrayed the trust placed in 
them had broken down like any screw out of a livery-sta- 
ble, like any jockey bribed to “ pull ” at a suburban selling- 
race. It was fearfully bitter work, and unanimous to a 
voice the indignant murmur of “doctored” ran through 
the titled fashionable crowds on the Baden course in deep 
and ominous anger. 

The Seraph’s grand wrath poured out fulminations 
against the wicked- doer whosoever he was, or wheresoever 
he lurked ; and threatened, with a vengeance that would be 
no empty words, the direst chastisement of the “ Club,” of 
which both his father and himself were stewards, upon the 
unknown criminal. The Austrian and French nobles while 
winners by the event, were scarce in less angered excite- 
ment ; it seemed to cast the foulest slur upon their honor, 
that upon foreign ground the renowned English steeple- 
chaser should have been tampered with thus ; and the fair 
ladies of either world added the influence of their silver 
tongues, and were eloquent in the vivacity of their sympa- 
thy and resentment with a unanimity women rarely show 
in savoring defeat, but usually reserve for the fairer oppor- 
tunity of swaying the censer before success. 

Cecil alone amid it all was very quiet ; he said scarcely a 
word, nor could the sharpest watcher have detected an alter- 
ation in his countenance. Only once, when they talked 
around him of the investigations of the Club, and of the 
institution of inquiries to discover the guilty traitor, he 
looked up with a sudden, dangerous lighting of his soft, 
dark, hazel eyes, under the womanish length of their lashes : 
“When you find him, leave him to me.” 

The light was gone again in an instant ; but to those 
who knew the wild strain that ran in the Royallieu blood 
knew by it that, despite his gentle temper, a terrible reck* 
12 * 


138 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


oiling for the evil done his horse might come Borne day from 
the Quietist. 

He said little or nothing else, and to the sympathy and 
indignation expressed for him on all sides he answered 
with his old, listless calm. But, in truth, he barely knew 
what was saying or doing about him; he felt like a man 
stunned and crushed with the violence of some tremendous 
fall ; the excitation, the agitation, the angry amazement 
around him (growing as near clamor and tumult as was 
possible in those fashionable betting-circles, so free from 
roughs and almost free from bookmakers), the conflicting 
opinions clashing here and there, even, indeed, the grace- 
ful condolence of the brilliant women, were insupportable 
to him. He longed to be out of this world which had so 
well amused him ; he longed passionately for the first time 
in his life to be alone. 

For he knew that with the failure of Forest King had 
gone the last plank that saved him from ruin ; perhaps the 
last chance that stood between him and dishonor. He had 
never looked on it as within the possibilities of hazard that 
the horse could be defeated ; now, little as those about him 
knew it, an absolute and irremediable disgrace fronted him. 
For, secure in the issue of the Prix de Dames, and com- 
pelled to weight his chances in it very heavily that his win- 
nings might be wide enough to relieve some of the debt- 
pressure upon him, his losses now were great, and he knew 
no more how to raise the moneys to meet them than he 
would have known how to raise the dead. 

The blow fell with crashing force ; the fiercer because 
his indolence had persisted in ignoring his danger, and be- 
cause his whole character was so naturally careless, and so 
habituated to ease and to enjoyment. 

A bitter, heartsick misery fell on him ; the tone of honor 
was high with him ; he might be reckless of everything 
else, but he could never be reckless in what infringed, or 
went nigh to infringe, a very stringent code. Bertie never 
reasoned in that way ; he simply followed the instincts ot 
his breeding without analyzing them; but these led him 
safely and surely right in all his dealings with his fellow- 
men. however open to censure his life might be in other 
matters. Careless as he was, and indifferent, to levity, in 


“ PETITE HEINE.” 139 

many things, his ideas of honor were really very pure and 
elevated ; he suffered proportionately now, that through the 
follies of his own imprudence, and the baseness of som-e 
treachery he could neither sift nor avenge, he saw himself 
driven down into as close a jeopardy of disgrace as ever 
befell a man who did not willfully, and out of guilty covet- 
ing of its fruits, seek it. 

For the first time in his life the society of his troops of 
acquaintance became intolerably oppressive ; for the first 
time in his life he sought refuge from thought in the stim- 
ulus of drink, Qand dashed down neat Cognac as though it 
were iced Badminton, as he drove with his set off the dis- 
astrous plains of Iffesheim. He shook himself free of 
them as soon as he could ; he felt the chatter round him 
insupportable ; the men were thoroughly good-hearted, 
and though they were sharply hit by the day’s issue, never 
even by implication hinted at owing the disaster to their 
faith in him, but the very cordiality and sympathy they 
showed cut him the keenest, — the very knowledge of their 
forbearance made his own thoughts darkest. 

Far worse to Cecil than the personal destruction the 
dfiy’s calamity brought him was the knowledge of the 
entire faith these men had placed in him, and the losses to 
which his own mistaken security had caused them. Granted 
he could neither guess nor avert the trickery which had 
brought about his failure ; but none the less did he feel 
that lie had failed them ; none the less did the very gener- 
osity and magnanimity they showed him sting him like a 
scourge. 

He got away from them at last, and wandered out alone 
into the gardens of the Stephanien, till the green trees of 
an alley shut him in in solitude, and the only echo of the 
gay world of Baden was the strain of a band, the light 
mirth of a laugh, or the roll of a carriage sounding down 
the summer air. 

It was eight o’clock ; the sun was slanting to the west 
in a cloudless splendor, bathing the bright scene in a rich 
golden glow, and tinging to bronze the dark masses of the 
Black Forest. In another hour he was the expected guest 
of a Russian Prince at a dinner party, where all that was 
highest, fairest, greatest, most powerful, and most bewitch- 


140 


UNDER TWO FL4GS. 


ing of every nationality represented there would meet 5 
and in the midst of this radiant whirlpool of extravagance 
and pleasure, where every man worth owning as such was 
his friend, and every woman whose smile he cared for wel- 
comed him, he knew himself as utterly alone, as utterly 
doomed, as the lifeless Prussian lying in the dead-house. 
No aid could serve him, for it would have been but to sink 
lower yet to ask or to take it; no power could save him 
from the ruin which in a few days later at the farthest 
would mark him out forever an exiled, beggared, perhaps 
dishonored, man, — a debtor and an alien. 

Where he had .thrown himself on a bench beneath a 
mountain-ash, trying vainly to realize this thing which had 
come upon him, and to meet which not training, nor habit, 
nor a moment’s grave reflection had ever done the slightest 
to prepare him, gazing blankly and unconsciously at the 
dense pine woods and rugged glens of the Forest that 
sloped upward and around above the green and leafy nest 
of Baden, he watched mechanically the toiling passage of 
a charcoal-burner going up the hill-side in the distance 
through the firs. 

“ Those poor devils envy us /” he thought. “ Better be 
one of them ten thousand times than be trained for the 
Great Race, and started with the cracks, dead weighted 
with the penalty-shot of Poverty 1” 

A soft touch came on his arm as he sat there ; he looked 
up, surprised : before him stood a dainty, delicate, little 
form, all gay with white lace, and broideries, and rose 
ribbons, and floating hair fastened backward with a golden 
fillet; it was that of the little Lady Yenetia, the only 
daughter of the House of Lyonnesse, by a late marriage 
of his Grace, the eight-year old sister of the colossal 
Seraph ; the plaything of a young and lovely mother, who 
had flirted in Belgravia with her future stepson before she 
fell sincerely and veritably in love with the gallant and 
still handsome Duke. 

Cecil roused himself and smiled at her ; he had been by 
months together at Lyonnesse most years of the child’s 
life, and had been gentle to her as he was to every living 
thing, though he had noticed her seldom. 

“Well, Petite Reine,” he said kindly, bitter as his 


“ PETITE REINE.” 141 

thoughts were, calling her by the name she generally bore, 
“ all alone ; where are your playmates ?” 

“ Petite Reine,” who, to justify her sobriquet, was a 
grand, imperial, little lady, bent her delicate head — a very 
delicate head, indeed, carrying itself royally, young though 
it was. 

“ Ah I you know I never care for children !” 

It was said so disdainfully, yet so sincerely, without a 
touch of affectation, and so genuinely, as the expression 
of a matured and contemptuous opinion, that even in that 
moment it amused him. She did not wait an answer, but 
bent nearer with an infinite pity and anxiety in her pretty 
eyes. 

“ I want to know ; you are so vexed, are you not? 

They say you have lost all your money !” 

“Do they? They are not far wrong then. Who are 
‘they,* Petite Reine ?” 

“ Oh, Prince Alexis, and the Due de Lorance, and 
Mamma, and everybody. Is it true ?” 

“Very true, my little lady.” 

“ Ah !” She gave a long sigh, looking pathetically at 
him, with her head on one side, and her lips parted ; “ I 
heard the Russian gentleman saying that you were ruined. 
Is that true, too ?” 

“ Yes, dear,” he answered wearily, thinking little of the 
child in the desperate excess to which his life had come. 

Petite Reine stood by him silent ; her proud, imperial 
young ladyship had a very tender heart, and she was very 
sorry ; she had understood what had been said before her 
of him vaguely indeed, and with no sense of its true mean- 
ing, yet still, with the quick perception of a brilliant and 
petted child. Looking at her, he saw with astonishment 
that her eyes were filled with tears ; he put out his hand 
and drew her to him. 

“Why, little one, what do you know of these things ? 
How did you find me out here ?” 

She bent nearer to him, swaying her slender figure, with 
its bright gossamer muslins, like a dainty hare-bell, and 
lifting her face to nis, earnest, beseeching, and very eager. 

“ I came — I came — please don’t be angry, — because I 
heard them say you had no money, and I want you to tako 


142 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


mine. Do take it ! Look, it is all bright gold, and it is 
my own, my very own. Papa gives it to me to do just 
what I like with. Do take it ; pray do !” 

Coloring deeply, for the Petite Heine had that true in- 
stinct of generous natures, a most sensitive delicacy for 
others, but growing ardent in her eloquence and imploring 
in her entreaty, she shook on to Cecil’s knee, out of a 
little enamel sweetmeat box, twenty bright Napoleons that 
fell in a glittering shower on the grass. 

He started, and looked at her in a silence that she mis- 
took for offense. She leaned nearer, pale now with her 
excitement, and with her large eyes gleaming and melting 
with passionate entreaty. 

“Don’t be angry; pray take it; it is all my own, and 
you know I have bonbons, and books, and playthings, and 
ponies, and dogs till I am tired of them ; I never want the 
money, indeed I don’t. Take it, please take it ; and if you 
will only let me ask Papa or Rock they will give you 
thousands and thousands of pounds if that isn’t enough ; 
do let me !” 

Cecil, in silence still, stooped and drew her to him ; 
when he spoke his voice shook ever so slightly, and he felt 
his eyes dim with an emotion that he had not known in all 
his careless life ; the child’s words and action touched him 
deeply, the caressing generous innocence of the offered 
gift beside the enormous extravagance and hopeless bank- 
ruptcy of his career, smote him with a keen pang, yet 
moved him with a strange pleasure. 

“Petite Heine,” he murmured gently, striving vainly for 
his old lightness, “ Petite Heine, how some man will love 
you one day ! Thank you from my heart, my little inno- 
cent friend.” 

Her face flushed with gladness ; she smiled with all a 
child’s unshadowed joy. 

“Ahl then you will take it? and if you want more 
only let me ask them for it ; Papa and Philip never refuse 
me anything I” 

His hand wandered gently over the shower of her hair, 
as he put back the Napoleons that he had gathered up into 
her azure bonbonni&re. 

“ Petite Heine, you are a little angel ; but I cannot take 


“petite reine.” ]43 

your money, my child, and you must ask for none for my 
Bake from your father or from Rock. Do not look so 
grieved little one ; I love you none the less because I re- 
fuse it.” 

Petite Reine’s face was very pale and grave ; a delicate 
face, in its miniature feminine childhood almost absurdly 
like the Seraph’s ; her eyes were full of plaintive wonder 
and of pathetic reproach. 

“Ah,” she said, drooping her head with a sigh, “ it is no 
good to you because it is such a little; do let me ask 
for more I” 

lie smiled, but the smile was very weary. 

“ No, dear, you must not ask for more ; I have been very 
foolish, my little friend, and I must take the fruits of my 
folly ; all men must. I can accept no one’s money, not 
even yours ; when you are older and remember this, you 
will know why ; but I do not thank you the less from my 
heart.” 

She looked at him pained and wistful. 

“You will not take anything , Mr. Cecil?” she asked 
with a sigh, glancing at her rejected Napoleons. 

He drew the enamel bonbonniere away. 

“ I will take that if you will give it me, Petite Reine, 
and keep it in memory of you.” 

As he spoke, he stooped and kissed her very gently; 
the act had moved him more deeply than he thought ho 
had it in him to be moved by anything, and the child’s 
face turned upward to him was of a very perfect and aris- 
tocratic loveliness far beyond her years. She colored as 
his lips touched hers, and swayed slightly from him. She 
was an extremely proud young sovereign, and never al- 
lowed caresses ; yet she lingered by him troubled, grave, 
with something intensely tender and pitiful in the musing 
look of her eyes. She had a perception that this calamity 
which smote him was one far beyond the ministering of 
her knowledge. 

He took the pretty Palais Royal gold-rimmed sweet- 
meat box, and slipped it into his waistcoat pocket ; it was 
only a child’s gift, a tiny Paris toy ; but it had been brought 
to him in a tender compassion, and he did keep it ; kept it 
through dark days and wild nights, through the scorch of 


144 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the desert and the shadows of death, till the young eyes 
that questioned him now with such innocent wonder had 
gained the grander luster of their womanhood and had 
brought him a grief wider than he knew now. 

At that moment, as the child stood beside him under 
the drooping acacia boughs, with the green sloping lower 
valley seen at glimpses through the wall of leaves, one of 
the men of the Stephanien approached him with an Eng- 
lish letter, which, as it was marked “ instant,” they had 
laid apart from the rest of the visitors’ pile of corre- 
spondence ; Cecil took it wearily — nothing but fresh em- 
barrassments could come to him from England and looked 
at the little Lady Yenetia. 

“ You will allow me ?” 

She bowed her graceful head ; with all the naif uncon- 
sciousness of a child, she had all the manner of the vielle 
cour; together they made her enchanting. 

He broke the envelope and read ; — a blurred, scrawled, 
miserable letter, the words erased with passionate strokes, 
and blotted with hot tears, and scored out in impulsive 
misery. It was long, yet at a glance he scanned its mes- 
sage and its meaning ; at the first few words he knew its 
whole as well as though he had studied every line. 

A strong tremor shook him from head to foot, a tremor 
at once of passionate rage and of as passionate paiu ; his 
face blanched to a deadly whiteness ; his teeth clinched 
as though he were restraining some bodily suffering, and 
he tore the letter in two and stamped it down into the 
turf under his heel, with a gesture as unlike his common 
serenity of manner as the fiery passion that darkened in 
his eyes was unlike the habitual softness of his too pliant 
and too unresentful temper. He crushed the senseless paper 
again and again down into the grass beneath his heel ; his 
lips shook under the silky abundance of his beard; the 
natural habit of long usage kept him from all utterance, 
and even in the violence of its shock he remembered the 
young Yenetia’s presence; but, in that one fierce unre- 
strained gesture, the shame and suffering upon him broke 
out despite himself. 

The child watched him startled and awed. She touched 
his hand softly. 


“ PETITE REINE.” 145 

“ What i3 it ? — is it anything worse ?” 

lie turned his eyes on her with a dry, hot, weary an 
guish in them ; he was scarcely conscious what he said or 
what he answered. 

“Worse — worse?” he repeated mechanically, while his 
heel still ground down in loathing the shattered paper 
into the grass. “ There can be nothing worse ! It is the 
vilest, blackest shame” 

He spoke to his thoughts, not to her ; the words died 
in his throat ; a bitter agony was on him ; all the golden 
summer evening, all the fair green world about him, were 
indistinct and unreal to his senses ; he felt as if the whole 
earth were of a sudden changed ; he could not realize that 
this thing could come to him and his — that this foul dis- 
honor could creep up and stain them — that this infamy 
could ever be of them and upon them. All the ruin that 
before had fallen on him to-day was dwarfed and banished; 
it looked nothing beside the unendurable horror that 
reached him now. 

The gay laughter of children sounded down the air at 
that moment ; they were the children of a French Princess 
seeking their playmate Yenetia, who had escaped from 
them and from their games to find her way to <Cecil ; he 
motioned her to them ; he could not bear even the clear 
and pitying eyes of the Petite Heine to be upon hirn now. 

She lingered wistfully; she did not like to leave him. 

“ Let me stay with you,” she pleaded caressingly. “ You 
are vexed at something ; I cannot help you, but Rock 
will — the Duke will. Do let me ask them?” 

He laid his hand on her shoulder ; his voice, as he an- 
swered, was hoarse and unsteady. 

“Ho; go, dear. You will please me best by leaving 
me. Ask none — tell none ; I can trust you to be silent, 
Petite Reine.” 

She gave him a long, earnest look. 

“ Yes,” she answered simply and gravely, as one who 
accepts, and not lightly, a trust. 

Then she went slowly and lingeringly, with the sun on 
the gold fillet binding her hair, but the tears heavy on the 
shadow of her silken lashes. When next they met again 
the luster of a warmer sun that once burned on the white 
K 13 


146 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


walls of the palaces of Phoenicia and the leaping flames of 
the Temple of the God of Healing, shone upon them, and 
through the veil of those sweeping lashes there gazed the 
resistless sovereignty of a proud and patrician woman- 
hood. 

Alone, his head sank down upon his hands, he gave 
reins to the fiery scorn, the acute suffering which turn by 
turn seized him with every moment that seared the words 
of the letter deeper and deeper down into his brain. Until 
this he had never known what it was to suffer ; until this 
his languid creeds had held that no wise man feels strongly, 
and that to glide through life untroubled and unmoved is 
as possible as it is politic. How hei suffered, he suffered 
dumbly as a dog, passionately as a barbarian ; now he was 
met by that which, in the moment of its dealing, pierced 
his panoplies of indifference, and escaped his light phi- 
losophies. 

“Oh, God I” he thought, “if it were anything — any- 
thing — except Disgrace 1” 

In a miserable den, an hour or so before — there are 
miserable dens even in Baden, that gold-decked rendez- 
vous of princes, where crowned heads are numberless as 
couriers, and great ministers must sometimes he content 
with a shakedown — two men sat in consultation. Though 
the chamber was poor and dark, their table was loaded 
with various expensive wines and liqueurs ; of a truth, 
they were flush of money, and selected this poor place 
from motives of concealment rather than of necessity. 
One of them was the “ Welcher,” Ben Davis ; the other, a 
smaller, quieter man, with a keen vivacious Hebrew eye 
and an olive-tinted skin, a Jew, Ezra Baroni. The Jew 
was cool, sharp, and generally silent; the “Welcher,” 
heated, eager, flushed with triumph, and glowing with a 
gloating malignity. Excitement and the fire of very strong 
wines, of whose vintage brandy formed a large part, had 
made him voluble in exultation ; the monosyllabic senten- 
tiousness that had characterized him in the loose-box at 
Iioyallieu had been dissipated under the ardor of success ; 
and Ben Davis, with his legs on the table, a pipe between 
his teeth, and his bloated face purple with a brutal content- 


“PETITE REINE.” J *7 

ment, might have furnished to a Teniers the personification 
of culminated cunning and of delighted tyranny. 

“ That precious Guards’ swell 1” he muttered gloatingly 
for the hundredth time. “ I’ve paid him out at last 1 He 
won’t take a ‘Walk Over’ again in a hurry. Cuss them 
swells 1 they allays die so game ; it ain’t half a go after all, 
giving ’em a facer ; they just come up to time so cool under 
it all, and never show they are down, even when their 
backers throw up the sponge. You can’t make ’em give in 
not even when they’re mortal hit ; that’s the crusher of it.” 

“ Yell, what matter that ven you have hit ’em,” expostu- 
lated the more philosophic Jew. 

“ Why, it is a fleecin’ of one,” retorted the Welcher, 
savagely even amid his successes. “A clear fleecin’ of 
one. If one gets the better of a dandy chap like that, and 
brings him down neat and clean, one ought to have the 

spice of it. One ought to see him wince and cuss ’em 

all ! — that’s just what they’ll never do. No ! not if it was 
ever so. You may pitch into ’em like Old Harry, and 

those d d fine gentlemen ’ll just look as if they liked 

it. Yoit might strike ’em dead at your feet, and it’s my 
belief, while they was cold as stones, they’d manage to look 
not beaten yet. It’s a fleecin’ of one — a fleecin’ of one I” 
he growled afresh, draining down a great draught of 
brandy-heated Roussillon to drown the impatient convic- 
tion which possessed him that, let him triumph as he would, 
there would ever remain, in that fine intangible sense which 
his coarse nature could feel, though he could not have 
further defined it, a superiority in his adversary he could 
not conquer, a difference between him and his prey ho 
could not bridge over. 

The Jew laughed a little. 

“ Yot a shild you are, you Big Ben ! Yot matter how he 

look, so long as you have de success and pocket dc monish ?” 

Big Ben gave a long growl like a mastiff tearing to 

reach a bone just held above him. 

“Hang the blunt! The yellows ain’t a quarter worth 
to me what it ’ud be to see him just look as if he knew he 
was knocked over. Besides, laying agin’ him by that ere 
commission’s piled up hatsful of the ready to bo sure, I 
don’t say it liain’t, but there’s two thou’ knocked off lo«r 


148 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Willon, and the fool don’t deserve a tizzy of it ; be went 
and put the paint on so thick that if the Club don’t have 
a flare-up about the whole thing ” 

“Let dera 1” said the Jew serenely. “ Dey can do vot 
dey like ; dey von’t get to de bottom of de veil. I)at 
Yillon is sharp ; he vill know how to keep his tongue still ; 
dey can prove nothin’ ; dey may give de sack to a stable- 
boy, or dey may link demselves mighty bright in seem’ a 
mare’s nest, but dey vill never come to ws.” 

The Welcher gave a loud horse-guffaw of relish and 
enjoyment. 

“ No ! We know the ins and outs of Turf Law a trifle 
too well to be caught napping. A neater thing werent 
ever done, if it hadn’t been that the paint was put a trifle 
too thick. The ’oss should have just run ill , and no’t 
knocked over clean out ’o time like that. However, there 
ain’t no odds a cryin’ over spilt milk. If the Club do 
come a inquiry, we’ll show ’em a few tricks that’ll puzzle 
’em. But it’s my belief they’ll let it off on the quiet ; there 
ain’t a bit of evidence to show the ’oss was doctored, and 
the way he went stood quite as well for having been knocked 
off his feed and off his legs by the woyage and sich like. 
And now you go and put that swell to the grindstone for 
Act 2 of the comedy, will yer ?” 

Ezra Baroni smiled where he leant against the table 
looking over some papers. 

“ Dis is a delicate matter ; don’t you come putting your 
big paw in it — you’ll spoil it all.” 

Ben Davis growled afresh : 

“No, I ain’t a goin’. You know as well as me I can’t 
show ia the thing. Hanged if I wouldn’t a’most lief risk 
a lifer out at Botany Bay for the sake o’ wringin’ my fine 
feathered bird myself, but I daresn’t ; if he was to see me 
in it all ’ud be up. You must do it. Get along ; you look 
uncommon respectable. If your coat tails was a little bit 
longer, you might right and away be took for a parson.” 

The Jew laughed softly, the Welcher grimly, at the com- 
pliment they paid the Church ; Baroni put up his papers 
into a neat Russia letter book. Excellently dressed, 
without a touch of flashiness, he did look eminently re- 
spectable — and lingered a moment 


“petite reine.” 149 

“ I say, dear shild, vat if de Marquis vant to buy off 
and hush up ? Ten to von he vill ; he care no more for 
monish than for dem macaroons, and he love his friend, 
dey say.” 

Ben Davis took his legs off the table with a crash, and 
stood up, flushed, thirstily eager, almost aggressive in his 
peremptory excitement. 

“ Without wringing my dainty bird’s neck ? Not for a 
million paid out ’o hand I Without crushing my fine gen- 
tleman down into powder ? Not for all the blunt of every 
one o’ the Rothschilds ! Curse his woman’s face ! I’ve 
got to keep dark now, but when lie’s crushed, and smashed, 
and ruined, and pilloried, and druv’ out of this fine world, 
and warned off of all his aristocratic race-courses, then I’ll 
come in and take a look at him ; then I’ll see my brilliant 
gentleman a worn-out, broken-down swindler, a dyin’ in a 
bagnio 1” 

The intense malignity, the brutal hungry lust for ven- 
geance that inspired the words, lent their coarse vulgarity 
something that was for the moment almost tragical in its 
strength, almost horrible in its passion. Ezra Baroni 
looked at him quietly, then without another word went out 
— to a congenial task. 

“ Dat big shild is a fool,” mused the subtler and gentler 
Jew. “Vengeance is but de breath of de vind, it blow for 
you one day, it blow against you de next: de only real 
good is monish.” 

The Seraph had ridden back from Iffesheim to the Bad 
In company with same Austrian officers, and one or two of 
his own comrades. He had left the Course late, staying to 
exhaust every possible means of inquiry as to the failure 
of Forest King, and to discuss with other members of the 
Newmarket and foreign jockey clubs the best methods — if 
method there were — of discovering what foul play had been 
on foot with the horse. That there was some, and very 
foul too, the testimony of men and angels would not have 
dissuaded the Seraph, and the event had left him most un- 
usually grave and regretful. 

The amount he had lost himself, in consequence, was of 
not the slightest moment to him, although he was extrav- 
agant enough to run almost to the end even of his own 
13 * 


150 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


princely tether in money matters; but that “Beauty” 
should be cut down was more vexatious to him than any 
evil accident that could have befallen himself, and he 
guessed pretty nearly the terrible influence the dead failure 
would have on his friend’s position. 

True, he had never heard Cecil breathe a syllable that 
hinted at embarrassment ; but these things get known 
with tolerable accuracy about the town, and those who 
were acquainted, as most people in their set were, with the 
impoverished condition of the Royallieu Exchequer, how- 
ever hidden it might be under an unabated magnificence of 
living, were well aware also that none of the old Yiscount’s 
sons could have any safe resources to guarantee them from 
as rapid a ruin as they liked to consummate. Indeed, it 
had of late been whispered that it was probable, despite 
the provisions of the entail, that all the green wealth and 
Norman beauty of Royallieu itself would come into the 
market. Hence the Seraph, the best-hearted and most 
generous-natured of men, was worried by an anxiety and a 
despondency which he would never have indulged most 
assuredly on his own account, as he rode away from Iffe- 
sheim after the defeat of his Corps’ champion. 

He was expected to dinner with one of the most lovely 
of foreign Ambassadresses, and was to go with her after- 
ward to the Vaudeville, at the pretty golden theater, 
where a troupe from the Bouffes were playing; but he 
felt anything but in the mood for even her bewitching and 
— in a marriageable sense — safe society, as he stopped his 
horse at his own hotel, the Badischer Hof. 

-As he swung himself out of saddle, a well-dressed, quiet, 
rather handsome little man drew near respectfully, lifting 
his hat, — it was M. Baroni. The Seraph had never seen 
the man in his life that he knew of, but he was himself 
naturally frank, affable, courteous, and never given to 
hedging himself behind the pale of his high rank ; pro- 
vided you did not bore him, you might always get access 
to him easily enough — the Duke used to tell him too 
easily. 

Therefore, when Ezra Baroni deferentially approached 
“the Most Noble the Marquis of Rockingham, I think?” 
the Seraph, instead of leaving the stranger there discom-’ 


151 


“PETITE HEINE.” 

fited, nodded and paused with his inconsequent good 
nature, thinking how much less bosh it would be if every- 
body could call him like his family and his comrades, 
“ Rock.” 

“That is my name,” he answered. “I do not know 
you ; do you want anything of me ?” 

The Seraph had a vivid terror of people who “ wanted 
him,” in the subscription, not the police, sense of the 
word ; and had been the victim of frauds innumerable. 

“ I wished,” returned Baroni respectfully, but with suffi- 
cient independence to conciliate his auditor, whom he saw 
at a glance cringing subservience would disgust, “ to have 
the opportunity of asking your lordship a very simple 
question.” 

The Seraph looked a little bored, a little amused. 

“Well, ask it, my good fellow; you have your oppor- 
tunity !” he said impatiently, yet good-humored still. 

“ Then would you, my lord,” continued the Jew with his 
strong Hebrew-German accent, “ be so good as to favor 
me by saying whether this signature be your own?” 

The Jew held before him a folded paper, so folded that 
one line only was visible, across which was dashed in bold 
characters, Rockingham. 

The Seraph put up his eye-glass, stooped, and took a 
steadfast look, then shook his head. 

“No; that is not mine, at least, I think not. Never 
made my R half a quarter so well in my life.” 

“ Many thanks, my lord,” said Baroni quietly. “ One 
question more and we can substantiate the fact. Did 
your lordship indorse any bill on the 15th of last month ?” 

The Seraph looked surprised, and reflected a moment. 
“ No I didn’t,” he said, after a pause; “ I have done it for 
men, but not on that day; I was shooting at Hornsey 
Wood most of it if I remember right. Why do you ask?” 

“ I will tell you, my lord, if you grant me a private in- 
terview.” 

The Seraph moved away. “ Never do that,” he said 
briefly ; “ private interviews,” thought he, acting on past 
experience, “ with women always mean proposals, and with 
men always mean extortion.” 

Baroni made a quick movement toward him. 


152 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“An instant, my lord ! This intimately concerns your- 
self. The steps of an hotel is surely not the place in which 
to speak of it ?” 

“ I wish to hear nothing about it,” replied Iiock, putting 
him aside ; while he thought to himself regretfully, 
“ That is * stiff,’ that bit of paper ; perhaps some poor 
wretch is in a scrape. I wish I hadn’t so wholly denied 
my signature. If the mischiefs done there’s no good in 
bothering the fellow.” 

The Seraph’s good nature was apt to overlook such 
trifles as the Law. 

Baroni kept pace with him as he approached the hotel 
door, and spoke very low. 

“My lord, if you do not listen worse may befall the 
reputation both of your regiment and your friends.” 

The Seraph swung round ; his careless handsome face 
set stern in an instant; his blue eyes grave, and gathering 
an ominous fire. 

“ Step yonder,” he said curtly, signing the Hebrew to- 
ward the grand staircase. “ Show that person to my rooms, 
Alexis.” 

But for the publicity of the entrance of the Badischer 
Hof the mighty right arm of the Guardsman might have 
terminated the interview then and there in different fashion. 
Baroni had gained his point, and was ushered into the fine 
chambers set apart for the future Duke of Lyonnesse ; the 
Seraph strode after him, and as the attendant closed the 
door and left them alone in the first of the great lofty suite, 
all glittering with gilding, and ormolu, and malachite, and 
rose velvet, and Parisian taste, stood like a tower above 
the Jew’s small, slight form ; while his words came curtly, 
and only by a fierce effort through his lips. 

“Substantiate what you dare to say, or my grooms shall 
throw you out of that window ! — now ?” 

Baroni looked up unmoved ; the calm, steady, undis- 
turbed glance sent a chill over the Seraph ; he thought if 
this man came but for purposes of extortion, and were 
not fully sure that he could make good what he had said, 
this was not the look he would give. 

“ I desire nothing better, my lord,” said Baroni, quietly, 
" though I greatly regret to be the messenger of such an 


“ PETITE REINE.” 153 

errand. This bill, which in a moment I will have the honor 
of showing you, was transacted by my house (I am one .of 
the partners of a London discounting firm), indorsed thus 
by your celebrated name. Moneys were lent on it, the bill 
was made payable at two months date, it was understood 
that you accepted it, there could be no risk with such a 
signature as yours. The bill was negotiated, I was in 
Leyden, Lubeck, and other places at the period, I heard 
nothing of the matter; when I returned to London, a little 
less than a week ago, I saw the signature for the first time. 
I was at once aware that it was not yours, for I had some 
paid bills, signed by you, at hand, with which I compared 
it. Of course, my only remedy was to seek you out, although 
I was nearly certain before your present denial that the bill 
was a forgery. ” 

He spoke quite tranquilly still, with a perfectly respect- 
ful regret, but with the air of a man who has his title to be 
heard, and is acting simply in his own clear right. The 
Seraph listened restless, impatient, sorely tried to keep the 
passion in which had been awakened by the hint that this 
wretched matter could concern or attaint the honor of his 
corps. 

“Well I speak out!” he said, impatiently. “Details are 
nothing. Who drew it? Who forged my name, if it be 
forged? Quick! give me the paper.” 

“With every trust and every deference, my lord, I can- 
not let the bill pass out of my own hands until this un- 
fortunate matter be cleared up — if cleared up it can be. 
Your lordship shall see the bill, however, of course, 
spread here upon the table, but first, let me warn you, 
my Lord Marquis, that the sight will be intensely painful 
to you.” 

“Very painful, my lord,” added Baroni, impressively. 
“ Prepare yourself for ” 

Rock dashed his hand down on the marble table with a 
force that made the lusters and statuettes on it ring and 
tremble. 

“ No more words ! Lay the bill there.” 

Baroni bowed and smoothed out upon the console the 
crumpled document, holding it with one hand, yet leaving 
visible with the counterfeited signature, one other, tho 


154 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


name of the forger in whoso favor the bill was drawn ; 
that other signature was Bertie Cecil. 

“I deeply regret to deal you such a blow from such a 
friend, my lord,” said the Jew, softly. The Seraph stooped 
and gazed — one instant* of horrified amazement kept him 
dumb there, staring at the written paper as at some ghastly 
thing; then all the hot blood rushed over his fair, bold 
face, he flung himself on the Hebrew, and ere the other 
could have breath or warning tossed him upward to the 
painted ceiling and hurled him down again upon the velvet 
carpet, as lightly as a retriever will catch up and let fall a 
wild duck or a grouse, and stood over Baroni where he 
lay. 

“ You hound 1” 

Baroni, lying passive and breathless with the violence 
of the shock and the surprise, yet keeping, even amid the 
hurricane of wrath that had tossed him upward and down- 
ward as the winds toss leaves, his hold upon the document, 
and his clear, cool, ready self-possession. 

“My lord,” he said, faintly, “I do not wonder at your 
excitement, aggressive as it renders you ; but I cannot 
admit that false which I know to be a for ” 

“ Silence 1 Say that word once more and I shall forget 
myself, and hurl you out into the street like the dog of a 
Jew you are 1” 

“ Have patience an instant, my lord. Will it profit your 
friend and brother-in-arms if it be afterward said that 
when this charge was brought against him, you, my Lord 
Rockingham, had so little faith in his power to refute it 
that you bore down with all your mighty strength in a 
personal assault upon one so weakly as myself, and sought 
to put an end to the evidence against him by bodily threats 
against my safety, and by — what will look legally, my lord, 
like — an attempt to coerce me into silence, and to obtain 
the paper from my hands by violence ?” 

Faint and hoarse the words were, but they were spoken 
with quiet confidence, with admirable acumen ; they were 
the very words to lash the passions of his listener into 
unendurable fire, yet to chain them powerless down; the 
Guardsman stood above him, his features flushed and dark 
with rage, his eyes literally blazing with fury, his lips work- 


11 PETITE REINE.” 155 

fug under his tawny leonine beard. At every syllable he 
could have thrown himself afresh upon the Jew and flung 
him out of his presence as so much carrion ; yet the impo- 
tence that truth so often feels caught and meshed in the 
coils of subtlety, the desperate disadvantage at which 
Right is so often placed when met by the cunning science 
and sophistry of Wrong, held the Seraph in their net now. 
He saw his own rashness, he saw how his actions could be 
construed till they cast a slur even on the man he defended, 
he saw how legally he was in error, how legally the gallant 
vengeance of an indignant friendship might be construed 
into consciousness of guilt in the accused for whose sake 
the vengeance fell. 

He stood silent, overwhelmed with the intensity of his 
own passion, baffled by the ingenuity of a serpent-wisdom 
he could not refute. 

Ezra Baroni saw his advantage: he ventured to raise 
himself slightly. 

“ My lord, since your faith in your friend is so perfect, 
send for him. If he be innocent, and I a liar, with a look 
I shall be confounded.” 

The tone was perfectly impassive, but the words ex- 
pressed a world. For a moment the Seraph’s eyes flashed 
on him with a look that made him feel nearer his death 
than he had been near to it in all his days ; but Rocking- 
ham restrained himself from force. 

“I will send for him,” he said briefly; in that answer 
there was more of menace and of meaning than in any 
physical action. 

He moved, and let Baroni rise, shaken and bruised, but 
otherwise little seriously hurt, and still holding, in a tena- 
cious grasp, the crumpled paper. He rang; his own ser- 
vant answered the summons. 

“ Go to the Stephanien and inquire for Mr. Cecil. Be 
quick; and request him, wherever he be, to be so good 
as to come to me instantly — here.” 

The servant bowed and withdrew ; a perfect silence fol- 
lowed between these two so strangely assorted compan- 
ions ; the Seraph stood with his back against the mantle- 
piece, with every sense on the watch to catch every move- 
ment of the Jew’s, and to hear the first sound of Cecil’s 


156 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


approach. The minutes dragged on, the Seraph was ic 
an agony of probation and impatience. Once the attend- 
ants entered to light the chandeliers and candelabra ; the 
full light fell on the dark, slight form of the Hebrew, and 
on the superb attitude and the fair, frank, proud face of 
the standing Guardsman; neither moved — once more they 
were left alone. 

The moments ticked slowly away one by one, audible in 
the silence. Now and then the quarters chimed from the 
clock ; it was the only sound in the chamber. 


CHAPTER XI. 

FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 

Tiie door opened.— Cecil entered. 

The Seraph crossed the room, with his hand held out; 
not for his life in that moment would he have omitted that 
gesture of friendship. Involuntarily he started and stood 
still one instant in amaze ; the next, he flung thought away 
and dashed into swift, inconsequent words. 

“ Cecil, my dear fellow ! — I’m ashamed to send for you 
on such a blackguard errand. Never heard of such a 
swindler’s trick in all my life ; couldn’t pitch the fellow 
into the street because of the look of the thing, and can’t 
take any other measures without you , you know. I only 
sent for you to expose the whole abominable business, 

never because I believe Hang it 1 Beauty, I can’t bring 

myself to say it even ! If a sound thrashing would have 
settled the matter, I wouldn’t have bothered you about it, 
nor told you a syllable. Only you are sure, Bertie, arn’t 
you, that I never listened to this miserable outrage on us 
both with a second’s thought there could be truth in it? 
You know me ? you trust me too well not to be certain 
of that ?” 

The incoherent address poured out from his lips in a 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


157 


breathless torrent ; he had never been so excited in his life ; 
and he pleaded with as imploring an earnestness as though 
lie had been the ‘suspected criminal, not to be accused with 
having one shadow of shameful doubt against his friend. 
His words would have told nothing except bewilderment 
to one who should have been a stranger to the subject on 
which he spoke ; yet Cecil never asked even what he 
meant. There was no surprise upon his face, no flush of 
anger, no expression of amaze or indignation, only the 
look which had paralyzed Rock on his entrance ; he stood 
still and mute. 

The Seraph looked at him, a great dread seizing him 
lest he should have seemed himself to cast this foul thing 
on his brother-in-arms ; and in that dread all the fierce fire 
of his freshly-loosened passion broke its bounds. 

“ Damnation 1 Cecil, can’t you hear me ? A hound has 
brought against you the vilest charge that ever swindlers 
framed : an infamy that he deserves to be shot for, as if he 
were a dog. He makes me stand before you as if I were 
your accuser ; as if 1 doubted you ; as if 1 lent an ear 
one second to his loathsome lie. I sent for you to con- 
front him, and to give him up to the law. Stand out, you 
scoundrel, and let us see how you dare look at us now!” 

He swung round at the last words, and signed to Baroni 
to rise from the couch where he sat. The Jew advanced 
slowly, softly. 

“ If your lordship will pardon me, you have scarcely 
made it apparent what the matter is for which this gen- 
tleman is wanted. You have scarcely explained to him 
that it is on a charge of forgery.” 

The Seraph’s eyes flashed on him with a light like a 
lion’s, and his right hand clinched hard. 

“By my life! if you say that word again you shall be 
flung in the street, like the cur you are, let me pay what I 
will for it. Cecil, why don’t you speak ?” 

Bertie had not moved ; not a breath escaped his lips. 
He stood like a statue, deadly pale in the gas-light ; when 
the figure of Baroni rose up and came before him, a great 
darkness stole on his face — it was a terrible bitterness, a 
great horror, a loathing disgust; but it was scarcely crim- 
inality, and it was not fear. Still he stood perfectly silent 


158 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


a guilty man, any other than his loyal friend would have 
said : guilty, and confronted with a just accuser. The 
Seraph saw that look, and a deadly chill passed over him, 
as it had done at the Jew’s first charge — not doubt ; such 
heresy to his creeds, such shame to his comrade and his 
corps could not be in him, 'but a vague dread hushed his 
impetuous vehemence. The dignity of the old Lyonnesse 
blood asserted its ascendency. 

“Monsieur Baroni, make your statement. Later on, 
Mr Cecil can avengfi it.” 

Cecil never moyed ; once his eyes went to Rockingham 
with a look of yearning, grateful, unendurable pain, but it 
was repressed instantly ; a perfect passiveness was on him. 
The Jew smiled. 

“ My statement is easily made, and will not be so new 
to this gentleman as it was to your lordship. I simply 
charge the Honorable Bertie Cecil with having negotiated 
a bill with my firm for £750, on the 15th of last month, 
drawn in his own favor, and accepted at two months’ date 
by your lordship. Your signature you, my Lord Marquis, 
admit to be a forgery — with that forgery I charge your 
friend.” 

“ The 15th !” 

The echo of those words alone escaped the dry white 
lips of Cecil ; he showed no amaze, no indignation ; once 
only, as the charge was made, he gave a sudden gesture, 
with a sudden gleam, so .dark, so dangerous, in his eyes, 
that his comrade thought and hoped that with one mo- 
ment more the Jew would be dashed down at his feet with 
the lie branded on his mouth by the fiery blow of a slan- 
dered and outraged honor. The action was repressed ; the 
extraordinary quiescence, more hopeless because more re- 
signed than any sign of pain or of passion, returned either 
by force of self-control or by the stupor of despair. 

The Seraph gazed at him with a fixed, astounded hor- 
ror ; he could not believe his senses ; he could not realize 
what he saw. Ilis dearest friend stood mute beneath the 
charge of lowest villainy — stood powerless before the false- 
hoods of a Jew extortioner 1 

“Bertie! Great Heaven!” he cried, well-nigh beside 
himself, “ how can you stand silent there ? Do you hear 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


159 


- — do you hear aright ? Do you know the accursed thing 
thi3 conspiracy has tried to charge you with ? Say some- 
thing, for the love of God ! I will have vengeance on 
your slanderer, if you take none.” 

Ho had looked*for the rise of the same passion that 
rang in his own imperious words, for the fearless wrath of 
an insulted gentleman, the instantaneous outburst of a con- 
temptuous denial, the fire of scorn, the lightning flash of 
fury — all that he gave himself, all that must be so natu- 
rally given by a slandered man under a libel that brands 
him with disgrace. He had looked for these as surely as 
lie looked for the setting of one sun and the rise of an- 
other ; he would have staked his life on the course of his 
friend’s conduct as he would upon his own, and a ghastly 
terror sent a pang to his heart. 

Still — Cecil stood silent; there was a strange, set, re- 
pressed anguish on his face that made it chill as stone ; 
there was an unnatural calm upon him ; yet he lifted his 
head with a gesture haughty for the moment as any action 
that his defender could have wished. 

“ I am not guilty,” he said, simply. 

The Seraph’s hands were on his own in a close, eager 
grasp almost ere the words were spoken. 

“ Beauty, Beauty ! never say that to me. Do you think 
I can ever doubt you ?” 

For a moment Cecil’s head sank, the dignity with which 
he had spoken remained on him, but the scorn of his defi- 
ance and his denial faded. 

“ No, you cannot ; you never will.” 

The words were spoken almost mechanically, like a man 
in a dream. Ezra Baroni, standing calmly there with the 
tranquillity that an assured power alone confers, smiled 
slightly once more. 

“ You are not guilty, Mr. Cecil ? I shall be charmed 
if we can find it so. Your proofs ?” 

“ Proof? I give you my word .” 

Baroni bowed, with a sneer at once insolent but subdued. 

“We men of business, sir, are — perhaps inconveniently 
for gentlemen — given to a preference in favor of something 
more substantial. Your word, doubtless, is your bond 
among your acquaintance ; it is a pity for you that your 


160 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


friend’s name should have been added to the bond you 
placed with us. Business men’s pertinacity is a little 
wearisome, no doubt, to officers and members of the aris- 
tocracy like yourself ; but all the same I must persist — 
how can you disprove this charge ?” 

The Seraph turned on him with the fierceness of a blood- 
hound. 

“You dog ! If you use that tone again in my presence, 
I will double-thong you till you cannot breathe 1” 

Baroni laughed a little ; he felt secure now, and could 
not resist the pleasure of braving and of torturing the 
“ aristocrats.” 

“ I don’t doubt your will or your strength, my lord ; but 
neither do I doubt the force of the law to make you ac- 
count for any brutality of the prize-ring your lordship may 
please to exert on me.” 

The Seraph ground his heel into the carpet. 

“We waste words on that wretch,” he said abruptly to 
Cecil. “Prove his insolence the lie it is, and we will deal 
with him later on.” 

“ Precisely what I said, my lord,” murmured Baroni 
“Let Mr. Cecil prove his innocence.” 

Into Bertie’s eyes came a hunted, driven desperation. 
He turned them on Rockingham with a look that cut him 
to the heart ; yet the abhorrent thought crossed him — 
was it thus that men guiltless looked ? 

“ Mr. Cecil was with my partner at L50 on the evening 
of the 15th. It was long over business hours, but my 
partner to oblige him stretched a point,” pursued the soft, 
bland, malicious voice of the German Jew. “ If he were 
not at our office — where was he ? That is simple enough.” 

“Answered in a moment 1” said the Seraph, with im- 
petuous certainty. “ Cecil ! — to prove this man what he 
is, not for an instant to satisfy me — where were you at that 
time on the 15th ?” 

“The 15th 1” 

“Where were you ?” pursued his friend. “Were you 
at mess ? at the clubs ? dressing for dinner ? — where ? 
where ? There must be thousands of ways of remember- 
ing — thousands of people who’ll prove it for you ?” 

Cecil stood mute still j his teeth clinched on his under 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


161 


lip ; he could not speak ; — a woman’s reputation lay in his 
silence. 

“Can't you remember?” implored the Seraph. “You 
. will think— you must think 1” 

There was a feverish entreaty in his voice. That hunted 
helplessness with which a question so slight yet so mo- 
mentous was received, was forcing in on him a thought that 
he flung away like an asp. 

Cecil looked both of them full in the eyes — both his ac- 
cuser and his friend. He was held as speechless as though 
his tongue were paralyzed ; he was bound by his word of 
honor ; he was weighted with a woman’s secret. 

“ Don’t look at me so, Bertie, for mercy’s sake ! Speak ! 
where were you ?” 

“ I cannot tell you ; but I was not there.” 

The words were calm ; there was a great resolve in them, 
moreover ; but his voice was hoarse and his lips shook. 
He paid a bitter price for the butterfly pleasure of a sum- 
mer-day love. 

“ Cannot tell me ? — cannot ? You mean you have for- 
gotten !” 

“ I cannot tell you ; it is enough.” 

There was an almost fierce and sullen desperation in the 
answer ; its firmness was not shaken, but the ordeal was 
terrible. A woman’s reputation, — a thing so lightly thrown 
away with an idler’s word, a Lovelace’s smile ! — that was 
all he had to sacrifice to clear himself from the toils gath- 
ering around him. That was all ! And his word of honor. 

Baroni bent his head with an ironic mockery of sym- 
pathy. 

“ I feared so, my lord. Mr. Cecil ‘cannot tell.’ As it 
happens, my partner can tell. Mr. Cecil was with him at 
the hour and on the day I specify; and Mr. Cecil trans- 
acted with him the bill that I have had the honor of show- 
ing you ” 

“ Let me see it.” 

The request was peremptory to imperiousness, yet Cecil 
would have faced his death far sooner than he would have 
looked upon that piece of paper. 

Baroni smiled. 

L 


14 * 


162 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“It is not often that we treat gentlemen under misfor* 
tune in the manner we treat you, sir; they are usually 
dealt with more summarily, less mercifully. You must ex- 
cuse altogether my showing you the document ; both you 
and his lordship are officers skilled, I believe, in the patri- 
cian science of fist- attack.” 

He could not deny himself the pleasure and the rarity 
of insolence to the men before him, so far above him in 
social rank, yet at that juncture so utterly at his mercy. 

“You mean that we should fall foul of you and seize 
it?” thundered Rockingham in the magnificence of his 
wrath. “ Do you judge the world by your own wretched 
villainies ? Let him see the paper ; lay it there, or, as 
there is truth on earth, I will kill you where you stand.” 

The Jew quailed under the fierce flashing of those 
leonine eyes. He bowed with that tact which never for- 
sook him. 

“ I confide it to your honor, my Lord Marquis,” he 
said, as he spread out the bill on the console. He was an 
able diplomatist. 

Cecil leaned forward and looked at the signatures dashed 
across the paper ; both who saw him saw also the shiver, 
like a shiver of intense cold, that ran through him as he 
did so, and saw his teeth clinch tight, in the extremity of 
rage, in the excess of pain, or — to hold in all utterance 
that might be on his lips. 

“ Well ?” asked the Seraph, in a breathless anxiety. He 
knew not what to believe, what to do, whom to accuse of, or 
how to unravel this mystery of villainy and darkness ; but 
he felt, with a sickening reluctance which drove him wild, 
that his friend did not act in this thing as he should have 
acted ; not as men of assured innocence and secure honor 
act beneath such a charge. Cecil was unlike himself, un- 
like every deed and word of his life, unlike every thought 
of the Seraph’s fearless expectance, when he had looked 
for the coming of the accused as the signal for the sure 
and instant unmasking, condemnation, and chastisement of 
tbe false accuser. 

“ Do you still persist in denying your criminality in the 
face of that bill, Mr. Cecil ?” asked the bland, sneering, 
courteous voice of Ezra Baroni. 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


163 


“I do. I never wrote either of these signatures; I 
never saw that document until to-night.” 

The answer was firmly given, the old blaze of scorn came 
again in his weary eyes, and his regard met calmly and 
unflinchingly the looks fastened on him ; but the nerves of 
his lips twitched, his face was haggard as by a night’s deep 
gambling ; there was a heavy dew on his forehead ; — it 
was not the face of a wholly guiltless, of a wholly uncon- 
scious man ; often even as innocence may be unwittingly 
betrayed into what wears the semblance of self-condemna- 
tion. 

“ And yet you equally persist in refusing to account for 
your occupation of the early evening hours of the 15th? 
Unfortunate 1” 

“ I do ; but in your account of them you lie.” 

There was a sternness inflexible as steel in the brief sen- 
tence. Under it for an instant, though not visibly, Baroni 
flinched ; and a fear of the man he accused smote him, 
more deep, more keen than that with which the sweeping 
might of the Seraph’s fury had moved him. He knew now 
why Ben Davis had hated with so deadly a hatred the 
latent strength that slept under the Quietist languor and 
nonchalance of “the d d Guards’ swell.” 

What he felt, however, did not escape him by the slight- 
est sign. 

“As a matter of course you deny it!” he said with a 
polite wave of his hand. “ Quite right; you are not re- 
quired to criminate yourself. I wish sincerely we were not 
compelled to criminate you.” 

The Seraph’s grand, rolling voice broke in; he had 
stood chafing, chained, panting, in agonies of passion and 
of misery. 

“M. Baroni!” he said, hotly, the furious vehemence of 
his anger and his bewilderment obscuring in him all mem- 
ory of either law or fact, “you have heard his signature 
and your statements alike denied once for all by Mr. Cecil. 
Your document is a libel and a conspiracy, like your 
charge ; it is false, and you are swindling ; it is an out- 
rage, and you are a scoundrel ; you have schemed this in- 
famy for the sake of extortion ; not a sovereign will you 
obtain through it. Were the accusation you dare to make 


164 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


true, I am the only one whom it can concern, since it is my 
name which is involved. Were it true, — could it possibly 
be true, — I should forbid any steps to be taken in it; I 
should desire it ended once and forever. It shall be so now, 
by God!” 

He scarcely knew what he was saying, yet what he did 
say, utterly as it defied all checks of law or circumstance, 
had so gallant a ring, had so kingly a wrath, that it awed 
and impressed even Baroni in the instant of its utterance. 

“ They say that those fine gentlemen fight like a thou- 
sand lions when they are once roused,” he thought. “ I 
can believe it.” 

“ My lord,” he said, softly, “you have called me by many 
epithets, and menaced me with many threats since I have 
entered this chamber; it is not a wise thing to do with a 
man who knows the law. However, I can allow for the 
heat of your excitement. As regards the rest of your 
speech, you will permit me to say that its wildness of lan- 
guage is only equaled by the utter irrationality of your 
deductions, and your absolute ignorance of all legalities. 
Were you alone concerned and alone the discoverer of this 
fraud, you could prosecute or not as you please ; but we 
are the subjects of its imposition, ours is the money that 
he has obtained by that forgery, and we shall in conse- 
quence open the prosecution.” 

“Prosecution?” The echo rang in an absolute agony 
from his hearer; he had thought of it as, at its worst, only 
a question between himself and Cecil. 

The accused gave no sign, the rigidity and composure 
he had sustained throughout did not change ; but at the 
Seraph’s accent the hunted and pathetic misery which had 
once before gleamed in his eyes came there again ; he held 
his comrade in a loyal and exceeding love. He would 
have let all the world stone him, but he could not have 
borne that his friend should cast even a look of contempt. 

“ Prosecution 1” replied Baroni quietly. “ It is a matter 
of course, my lord, that Mr. Cecil denies the accusation ; 
it is very wise ; the law specially cautions the accused to 
say nothing to criminate themselves. But we waste time 
in words ; and, parcfpn me, if you have your friend’s in- 
terest at heart, you will withdraw this very stormy cham- 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


1G5 


pionship, this utterly useless opposition to an inevitable 
line of action. I must arrest Mr. Cecil ; bat I am willing — 
for I know to high families these misfortunes are terribly 
distressing — to conduct everything with the strictest pri- 
vacy and delicacy. In a word, if you and he consult his 
interests, he will accompany me unresistingly ; otherwise I 
must summon legal force. Any opposition will only com- 
pel a very unseemly encounter of physical force, and with 
it the publicity I am desirous, for the sake of his relatives 
and position, to spare him.” 

A dead silence followed his words, the silence that fol- 
lows on an insult that cannot be averted or avenged, on a 
thing too hideously shameful for the thoughts to grasp it 
as reality. 

In the first moment of Baroni’s words, Cecil’s eyes had 
gleamed again with that dark and desperate flash of a pas- 
sion that would have been worse to face even than his 
comrade’s wrath ; it died, however, well-nigh instantly, 
repressed by a marvelous strength of control, whatever 
its motive. lie was simply, as he had been throughout, 
passive — so passive that even Ezra Baroni, who knew what 
the Seraph never dreamt, looked at him in wonder, and 
felt a faint sickly fear of that singular unbroken calm. It 
perplexed him — the first thing which had ever done so in 
his own peculiar paths of finesse and of intrigue. 

The one placed in ignorance between them, at once as 
it were the judge and champion of his brother-at-arms, felt 
wild and blind under this unutterable shame, which seemed 
to net them both in such close and hopeless meshes. lie, 
heir to one of the greatest coronets in the world, must see 
his friend branded as a common felon, and could do no 
more to aid or to avenge him than if he were a charcoal- 
burner toiling yonder in the pine woods ! TIis words were 
hoarse and broken as he spoke : 

“ Cecil, tell me — what is to be done ? This infamous 
outrage cannot pass ! cannot go on 1 I will send for the 
Duke, for ” 

“ Send for no one.” 

Bertie’s voice was slightly weaker, like that of a man 
exhausted by a Jong struggle, but it was firm and very 
quiet. Its composure fell ou Rockingham’s tempestuous 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


1G6 

grief and rage with a sickly, silencing awe, with a terrible 
sense of some evil here beyond his knowledge and minis- 
tering, and of an impotence alike to act and to serve, to 
defend and to avenge — the deadliest thing his fearless life 
had ever known. 

“ Pardon me, my lord,” interposed Baroni, “ I can waste 
time no more. You must be now convinced yourself of 
your friend’s implication in this very distressing affair.” 

“7/” The Seraph’s majesty of haughtiest amaze and 
scorn blazed from his azure eyes on the man who dared say 
this thing to him. “ 77 If you dare hint such a damna- 
ble shame to my face again, I will wring your neck with 
as little remorse as I would a kite’s. 7 believe in his guilt ? 
Forgive me, Cecil, that I can even repeat the word 1 7 

believe in it ? I would as soon believe in my own dis- 
grace — in my father’s dishonor 1”. 

“How will your lordship account, then, for Mr. Cecil’s 
total inability to tell us how he spent the hours between 
six and nine on the 15th ?” 

“Unable? He is not unable ; he declines ! Bertie, tell 
me what you did that one cursed evening ? Whatever it 
was, wherever it was, say it for my sake, and shame this 
devil.” 

Cecil would more willingly have stood a line of leveled 
rifle-tubes aimed at his heart than that passionate entreaty 
from the man he loved best on earth. lie staggered 
slightly, as if he were about to fall, and a faint white foam 
came on his lips ; but he recovered himself almost instantly. 
It was so natural to him to repress every emotion that it 
was simply old habit to do so now. 

“I have answered,” he said very low, each word a 
pang, — “I cannot.” , 

Baroni waved his hand again with the same polite, sig- 
nificant gesture. 

“In that case, then, there is but one alternative. Will 
you follow me quietly, sir, or must force be employed ?” 

“ I will go with you.” 

The reply was very tranquil, but in the look that met his 
own as it was given, Baroni saw that some other motive 
than that of any fear was its spring ; that some cause 
beyond the mere abhorrence of “ a scene” was at the root 
of the quiescence. 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


167 

"It must be so,” said Cecil huskily to his friend. “This 
man is right, so far as he knows. He is only acting on his 
own convictions. We cannot blame him. The whole is 
— a mystery, an error. But, as it stands, there is no re- 
sistance.” 

“ Resistance 1 By God ! I would resist if I shot him 
dead, or shot myself. Stay — wait — one moment ! If it 
be an error in the sense you mean, it must be a forgery of 
your name as of mine. You think that?” 

“ I did not say so.” 

The Seraph gave him a rapid, shuddering glance ; for 
once the suspicion crept in on him — was this guilt ? Yet 
even now the doubt would not be harbored by him. 

“ Say so — you must mean so ! You deny them as yours ; 
what can they be but forgeries ? There is no other expla- 
nation. I think the whole matter a conspiracy to extort 
money; but I may be wrong — let that pass. If it be, on 
the contrary, an imitation of both our signatures that has 
been palmed off upon these usurers, it is open to other 
treatment. Compensated for their pecuniary loss, they can 
have no need to press the matter further, unless they find 
out the delinquent. See here 1” he went to a writing- 
cabinet at the end of the room, flung the lid back, swept 
out a herd of papers, and wrenching a blank check from 
its book, threw it down before Baroni ; “here! fill it up 
as you like, and I will sign it, in exchange for the forged 
sheet.” 

Baroni paused a moment. Money he loved with an ado- 
ration that excluded every other passion; that blank 
check, that limitless carte blanche, that vast exchequer 
from which to draw ! — it was a sore temptation. He 
thought wistfully of the Welcher’s peremptory forbiddance 
of all compromise — of the Welcher’s inexorable command 
to “ wring the fine-feathered bird,” lose whatever might be 
lost by it. 

Cecil, ere the Hebrew could speak, leant forward, took 
the check and tore it in two. 

“God bless you, Rock,” he said, so low that it only 
reached the Seraph’s ear, “but you must not do that.” 

“ Beauty, are you mad ?” cried the Marquis, passion- 
ately “ If this villainous thing be a forgery, you are its 


163 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


victim as much as I — tenfold more than I. If this Jew 
choose to sell the paper to me, naming his own compensa- 
tion, whose affair is it except his and mine ? They have 
been losers, we indemnify them. It rests with us to 
find out the criminal. M. Baroni, there are a hundred 
more checks in that book, name your price, and you shall 
have it; or, if you prefer my father’s, I will send to him 
for it. His Grace will sign one without a question of its 
errand, if I ask him. Come ! your price ?” 

Baroni had recovered the momentary temptation, and 
was strong in the austerity of virtue, in the unassailability 
of social duty. 

“You behave most nobly, most generously by your 
friend, my lord,” he said politely. “Iam glad such friend- 
ship exists on earth. But you really ask me what is not 
in my power. In the first place, I am but one of the firm, 
and have no authority to act alone ; in the second, I most 
sertainly, were I alone, should decline totally any pecu- 
niary compromise. A great criminal action is not to be 
hushed up by any monetary arrangement. You, my Lord 
Marquis, may be ignorant in the Guards of a very coarse 
term used in law, called ‘compounding with felony.’ That 
is to what you tempt me now.” 

The Seraph, with one of those oaths that made the He- 
brew’s blood run cold, though he was no coward, opened 
his lips to speak ; Cecil arrested him with that singular 
impassiveness, that apathy of resignation which had char- 
acterized his whole conduct throughout, save at a few brief 
moments. 

“Make no opposition. The man is acting but in his 
own justification. I will wait for mine. To resist would 
be to degrade us with a bully’s brawl ; they have the law 
with them. Let it take its course.” 

The Seraph dashed his hand across his eyes; he felt 
blind — the room seemed to reel with him. 

“Oh, God ! that you ” 

He could not finish the words. That his comrade, his 
friend, one of his own corps, of his own world, should be 
arrested like the blackest thief in Whitechapel, or in the 
Rue du Temple ! 

Cecil glanced at him, and his eyes grew infinitely yearn- 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


169 


ing — infinitely gentle ; a shudder shook him all through 
his limbs. He hesitated a moment, then he stretched out 
his hand. 

“Will you take it — still ?” 

Almost before the words were spoken, his hand was held 
in both of the Seraph’s. 

“Take it? Before all the world — always, come what 
will.’ 

His eyes were dim as he spoke, and his rich voice rang 
clear as the ring of silver, though there was the tremor of 
emotion in it. He had forgotten the Hebrew’s presence ; 
he had forgotten all save his friend and his friend’s ex- 
tremity. Cecil did not answer ; if he had done so, all the 
courage, all the calm, all the control that pride and breed- 
ing alike sustained in him, would have been shattered down 
to weakness ; his hand closed fast in his companion’s, his 
eyes met his once in a look of gratitude that pierced the 
heart of the other like a knife ; then he turned to the Jew 
with a haughty serenity. 

“ M. Baroni, I am ready.” 

“ Wait !” cried Rockingham. “ Where you go I come.” 

The Hebrew interposed demurely. 

“ Forgive me, my lord — not now. You can take what 
Bteps you will as regards your friend later on ; and you 
may rest assured he will be treated with all delicacy com- 
patible with the case, but you cannot accompany him now. 
I rely on his word to go with me quietly, but I now regard 
him, and you must remember this, as not the son of Vis- 
count Royallieu — not the Honorable Bertie Cecil, of the 
Life Guards — not the friend of one so distinguished as 
yourself — but as simply an arrested forger.” 

Baroni could not deny himself that last sting of his ven- 
geance, yet, as he saw the faces of the men on whom he 
flang the insult, he felt for the moment that he might pay 
for his temerity with his life. He put his hand above his 
eyes with a quick, involuntary movement, like a man who 
wards off a blow. 

“ Gentlemen,” and his teeth chattered as he spoke, “ one 
sign of violence, and I shall summon legal force.” 

Cecil caught the Seraph’s lifted arm, and stayed it in its 
vengeance. His own teeth were clinched tight as a vice, 

15 


no 


UNDER TWO EL AGS. 


and over the haggard whiteness of his face a deep red flush 
had come. 

“We degrade ourselves by resistance. Let me go — 
they must do what they will. My reckoning must wait, 
and my justification. One word only : take the King, and 
keep him for my sake.” 

Another moment, and the door had closed ; he was gone 
out to his fate, and the Seraph, with no eyes on him, bowed 
down his head upon his arms where he leaned against the 
marble table, and, for the first time in all his life, felt the 
hot tears roll down his face like rain, as the passion of a 
woman mastered and unmanned him ; — he would sooner a 
thousand times have laid his friend down in his grave than 
have seen him live for this. 

Cecil went slowly out beside his accuser. The keen, 
bright eyes of the Jew kept vigilant watch and ward on 
him ; a single sign of any effort to evade him would have 
been arrested by him in an instant with preconcerted skill. 
He looked, and saw that no thought of escape was in his 
prisoner’s mind. Cecil had surrendered himself, and he 
went to his doom; he laid no blame on Baroni, and he 
scarce gave him a remembrance. The Hebrew did not 
stand to him in the colors he wore to Rockingham, who 
beheld this thing but on its surface : Baroni was to him 
only the agent of an inevitable shame, of a helpless fate 
that closed him in, netting him tight with the web of his 
own past actions ; no more than the irresponsible execu- 
tioner of what was in the Jew’s sight and in knowledge a 
just sentence. He condemned his accuser in nothing; no 
more than the conscience of a guilty man can condemn the 
discoverers and the instruments of his chastisement. 

Was he guilty ? 

Any judge might have said that he knew himself to be 
so as he passed down the staircase and outward to the en- 
trance with that dead resignation on his face, that brood- 
ing, rigid look set on his features, and gazing almost in 
stupefaction out from the dark hazel depths of eyes that 
women had loved for their luster, their languor, and the 
softness of their smile. 

They walked out into the evening air unnoticed : he had 
given his consent to follow the bill-discounter without re- 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


m 

sistance, and he had no thought to Dreak his word ; he 
had submitted himself to the inevitable course of this fate 
that had fallen on him, and the whole tone of his temper 
and his breeding lent him the quiescence, though he had 
none of the doctrine of a supreme fatalist. There were 
carriages standing before the hotel, waiting for those who 
were going to the ball-room, to the theater, to an arch- 
duke’s dinner, to a princess’s entertainment; he looked at 
them with a vague, strange sense of unreality — these things 
of the life from which he was now barred out forever. 
The sparkling tide of existence in Baden was flowing oil 
its way, and he went out an accused felon, bounded, and 
outlawed, and dishonored from all place in the world that 
he had led, and been caressed by, and beguiled with for 
so long. 

To-night, at this hour, he should have been among all 
that was highest and gayest and fairest in Europe at the 
banquet of a Prince — and he went by his captor’s side a 
convicted criminal. 

Once out in the air, the Hebrew laid his hand on his 
arm : he started — it was the first sign that his liberty was 
gone! He restrained himself from all resistance still, and 
passed onward, down where Baroni motioned him out of 
the noise of the carriages, out of the glare of the light, 
into the narrow, darkened turning of a side street. He 
went passively; for this man trusted to his honor. 

In the gloom stood three figures, looming indistinptly in 
the shadow of the houses; one was a Huissier of the Staats- 
Procurator, beside whom stood the Commissary of Police 
of the district; the third was an English detective. Ere 
he saw them, their hands were on his shoulders, and the 
cold chill of steel touched his wrists. The Hebrew had 
betrayed him, and arrested him in the open street. In an 
instant, as the ring of the rifle rouses the slumbering tiger, 
all the life and the soul that were in him rose in revolt as 
the icy glide of the handcuffs sought their hold on his arms. 
In an instant, all the wild blood of his race, all the pride 
of his breeding, all the honor of his service, flashed into 
fire and leapt into action. Trusted, he would have been 
true to his accuser; deceived, the chains of his promise 
were loosened, and all he thought, all he felt, all he knew 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


m 

were the lion impulses, the knightly instincts, the resolute 
choice to lose life rather than to lose freedom, of a soldier 
and a gentleman. All he remembered was that he would 
fight to the death rather than be taken alive; that they 
should kill him where he stood, in the starlight, rather 
than lead him in the sight of men as a felon. 

With the strength that laid beneath all the gentle lan- 
guor of his habits and with the science of the Eton Play- 
ing Fields of his boyhood, he wrenched his wrists free ere 
the steel had closed, and with the single straightening of 
his left arm felled the detective to earth like a bullock, 
with a crashing blow that sounded through the stillness 
like some heavy timber stove in ; flinging himself like 
lightning on the Huissier, he twisted out of his grasp the 
metal weight of the handcuffs, and wrestling with him was 
woven for a second in that close-knit struggle which is only 
seen when the wrestlers wrestle for life and death. The 
German was a powerful and firmly built man, but Cecil’s 
science was the finer and the more masterly. His long, 
slender, delicate limbs seemed to twine and writhe around 
the massive form of his antagonist like the coils of a cobra : 
they rocked and swayed to and fro on the stones, while the 
shrill, shrieking voice of Baroni filled the night with its 
clamor. The vice-like pressure of the stalwart arms of his 
opponent crushed him in till his ribs seemed to bend and 
break under the breathless oppression, the iron force ; but 
desperation nerved him, the Royallieu blood, that never 
took defeat, was roused now, for the first time in his care- 
less life ; his skill and his nerve were unrivaled, and with 
a last effort he dashed the Huissier off him, and lifting him 
up — he never knew how — as he would have lifted a log of 
wood, hurled him down in the white streak of moonlight 
that alone slanted through the peaked roofs of the crooked 
by-street. 

The cries of Baroni had already been heard; a crowd 
drawn by their shrieking appeals were bearing toward the 
place in tumult. The Jew had the quick wit to give them, 
as call-word, that it was a croupier who had been found 
cheating and fled; it sufficed to inflame the whole mob 
against the fugitive. Cecil looked round him once — such 
a glance as a Royal gives when the gaze-hounds are pant- 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


U3 


ing about him, and the fangs are in his throat; then with 
the swiftness of the deer itself he dashed downward into 
the gloom of the winding passage at the speed which had 
carried him, in many a foot-race, victor in the old green 
Eton meadows. There was scarce a man in the Queen’s 
Service who could rival him for lightness of limb, for power 
of endurance in every sport of field and fell, of the moor 
and the gymnasium ; and the athletic pleasures of many a 
happy hour stood him in good stead now, in the emergence 
of his terrible extremity. 

Flight! — for the instant the word thrilled through him 
with a loathing sense. Flight ! — the craven’s refuge, the 
criminal’s resource. He wished in the moment’s agony 
that they would send a bullet through his brain as he ran, 
rather than drive him out to this. Flight ! — he felt a 
coward and a felon as he lied ; fled from every fairer thing, 
from every peaceful hour, from the friendship and good will 
of men, from the fame of his ancient race, from the smile 
of the women that loved him, from all that makes life rich 
and fair, from all that men call honor; fled, to leave his 
name disgraced in the service he adored ; fled, to leave the 
world to think him a guilty dastard who dared not face his 
trial; fled, to bid his closest friend believe him low sunk in 
the depths of foulest felony, branded forever with a crimi- 
nal’s shame, — by his own act, by his own hand. Flight! 
— it has bitter pangs that make brave men feel cowards 
when they fly from tyranny and danger and death, to a 
land of peace and promise; but in his flight he left behind 
him all that made life worth the living, and went out to 
meet eternal misery, renouncing every hope, yielding up all 
his future. 

“It is for her sake — and his,” he thought: and without 
a moment’s pause, without a backward look, he ran, as the 
stag runs with the bay of the pack behind it, down into 
the shadows of the night. 

The hue and cry was after him; the tumult of a crowd’s 
excitement raised it knows not why or wherefore, was on 
his steps, joined with the steadier and keener pursuit of 
men organized for the hunters’ work, and trained to follow 
the faintest track, the slightest clew. The moon was out, 
and they saw him clearly, though the marvelous flectnesa 

15 * 


174 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


of his stride had borne him far ahead in the few moments’ 
start he had gained. He heard the beat of their many 
feet on the stones, the dull thud of their running, the loud 
clamor of the mob, the shrill cries of the Hebrew offering 
gold with frantic lavishness to whoever should stop his 
prey All the breathless excitation, all the keen and des- 
perate straining, all the tension of the neek-and-neck 
struggle that he had known so often over the brown autumn 
country of the Shires at home, he knew now, intensified to 
horror, made deadly with despair, changed into a race for 
life and death. 

Yet, with it the wild blood in him woke; the reckless- 
ness of peril, the daring and defiant courage that lay be- 
neath his levity and languor heated his veins and spurred 
his strength ; he was ready to die if they chose to slaughter 
him; but for his freedom he strove as men will strive for 
life; to distance them, to escape them, he would have 
breathed his last at the goal; they might fire him down if 
they would, but he swore in his teeth to die free. 

Some Germans in his path hearing the shouts that 
thundered after him in the night, drew their mule-cart 
across the pent-up passage-way down which he turned, and 
blocked the narrow road. He saw it in time : a second 
later, and it would have been instant death to him at the 
pace he went ; he saw it, and gathered all the force and 
nervous impetus in his frame to the trial as he came rush- 
ing downward along the slope of the lane, with his elbows 
back, and his body straight, as prize-runners run. The 
wagon, sideways, stretched across — a solid barrier, heaped 
up with fir boughs brought for firing from the forests, the 
mules stood abreast, yoked together. The mob following 
saw too, and gave a hoot and yell of brutal triumph ; their 
prey was in their clutches ; the cart barred his progress, 
and 'he must double like a fox faced with a stone wall. 

Scarcely 1 — they did not know the man with whom they 
had to deal — the daring and the coolness that the languid 
surface of indolent fashion had covered. Even in the im- 
minence of supreme peril, of breathless jeopardy, he meas- 
ured with unerring eye the distance and the need, rose as 
lightly in the air as Forest King had risen with him over 
fence and hedge, and with a single running leap cleared 


FOR A WOMAN’S SAKE. 


n 5 


the width of the mules’ backs, and landing safely on the 
farther side, dashed on, scarcely pausing for breath. The 
yell that hissed in his wake, as the throng saw him escape, 
by what to their slow Teutonic instincts seemed a devil’s 
miracle, was on his ear like the bay of the slot-hounds to 
the deer. They might kill him if they could, but they 
should never take him captive. 

And the moon was so brightly, so pitilessly clear, shining 
down in the summer light, as though in love with the beauty 
of earth ! He looked up once; the stars seemed reeling 
round him in disordered riot; the chill face of the moon 
looked unpitying as death. All this loveliness was round 
him ; this glory of sailing cloud and shadowy forest and 
tranquil planet, and there was no help for him. 

A gay burst of music broke on the stillness from the dis- 
tance; he had left the brilliance of the town behind him, 
and was now in its by-streets and outskirts. The sound 
"seemed to thrill him to the bone; it was like the echo of 
the lost life he was leaving forever. 

He saw, he felt, he heard, he thought; feeling and sense 
were quickened in him a§ they had never been before, yet 
lie never slackened his pace save once or twice, when he 
paused for breath ; he ran as swiftly, he ran as keenly, as 
ever stag or fox had run before him, doubling with their 
skill, taking the shadow as they took the covert, noting 
with their rapid eye the safest track, outracing with their 
rapid speed the pursuit that thundered in his wake. 

The by-lanes he took were deserted, and lie was now 
well-nigh out of the town, with the open country and for- 
est lying before him. The people whom he met rushed 
out of his path ; happily for him they were few, and were 
terrified, because they thought him a madman broken loose 
from his keepers. He never looked back; but he could 
tell that the pursuit was falling farther and farther behind 
him ; that the speed at which he went was breaking the 
powers of his hunters; fresh throngs added indeed to the 
first pursuers as they tore down through the starlit night, 
but none had the science with which he went, the trained, 
matchless skill of the university foot-race. He left them 
more and more behind, him each second of the breathless 
chase, that endless as it seemed had lasted bare three min- 


176 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


utes. If the night were but dark! he feli; that pitiless 
luminance glistening bright about him, everywhere, shining 
over all the summer world, and leaving scarce a shadow 
to fall athwart his way. The silver glory of the radiance 
was shed on every rood of ground; one hour of a winter 
night, one hour of the sweeping ink-black rain of an au- 
tumn storm, and he could have made for shelter as the 
stag makes for it across the broad brown highland water. 

Before him stretched indeed the gloom of the masses of 
pine, the upward slopes of tree-stocked hills, the vastness 
of the Black Forest ; but they were like the mirage to a 
man who dies in a desert; he knew at the pace he went 
he could not live to reach them. The blood was beating 
in his brain, and pumping from his heart; a tightness like 
an iron band seemed girt about his loins, his lips began to 
draw his breath in with loud gasping spasms; he knew 
that in a little space his speed must slacken — he knew it 
by the roar like the noise of waters that was rushing on 
his ear, and the oppression like a hand’s hard grip that 
seemed above his heart. 

But he would go till he died ; go till they fired on him ; 
go though the skies felt swirling round like a sea of fire, 
and the hard hot earth beneath his feet jarred his whole 
frame as his feet struck it flying. 

The angle of an old wood house, with towering roof 
and high-peaked gables, threw a depth of shadow at last 
across his road; a shadow black and rayless, darker for 
the white glisten of the moon around. Built more in the 
Swiss than the German style, a massive balcony of wood 
ran round it, upon and beneath which in its heavy shade 
was an impenetrable gloom, while the twisted wooden pil- 
lars ran upward to the gallery, loggia-like. With rapid 
perception and intuition he divined rather than saw these 
things, and, swinging himself up with noiseless lightness, 
he threw himself full length down on the rough flooring of 
the balcony. If they passed he was safe for a brief time 
more at least; if they found him — his teeth clinched like 
a mastiff’s where he lay — he had the strength in him still 
to sell his life dearly. 

The pursuers came closer and closer, and by the clamors 
that floated up in indistinct and broken fragments, he knew 


THE KING'S LAST SERVICE. 


m 

that they had tracked him. He heard the tramp of their 
feet as they came under the loggia; he heard the click of 
the pistols — they were close upon him at last in the black- 
ness of night. 


CHAPTER XII. 

THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 

“ Is he up there ?” asked a voice in the darkness. 

“Not likely. A cat couldn’t scramble up that wood- 
work,” answered a second. 

“ Send a shot, and try,” suggested a third. 

There he lay, stretched motionless on the flat roof of the 
veranda. He heard the words as the thronging mob 
surged, and trampled, and" swore, and quarreled, beneath 
him, in the blackness of the gloom, balked of their prey, 
and savage for some amends. There was a moment’s 
pause, a hurried, eager consultation; then he heard the 
well-known sound of a charge being rammed down, and 
the sharp drawing out of a ramrod ; there was a flash, a 
report, a line of light flamed a second in his sight, a ball 
hissed past him with a loud, singing rush, and bedded it- 
self in the timber a few inches above his uncovered hair. 
A dead silence followed; then the muttering of many 
voices broke out afresh. 

“ He’s not there, at any rate,” said one, who seemed the 
chief ; “ he couldn’t have kept as still as that with a shot 
so near him. He’s made for the open country and the 
forest, I’ll take my oath.” 

Then the treading of many feet trampled their way out 
from beneath the loggia; their voices and their rapid steps 
grew fainter and fainter as they hurried away through the 
night. For awhile, at least, he was safe. 

For some moments he lay prostrated there; the rush- 
ing of the blood on his brain, the beating of his heart, the 
panting of his breath, the quivering of his limbs after the 
intense muscular effort he had gone through, mastered him, 
M 


ITS 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and flung him down there beaten and powerless. He felt 
the foam on his lips, and he thought with every instant 
that the surcharged veins would burst; hands of steel 
seemed to crush in upon his chest, knotted cords to tiglien 
in excruciating pain about his loins ; he breathed in short 
convulsive gasps; his eyes were blind, and his head swam. 
A dreaming fancy that this was death vaguely came on him, 
and he was glad it should be so. 

His eyelids closed unconsciously, weighed down as by 
the weight of lead; he saw the starry skies above him no 
more, and the distant noise of the pursuit waxed duller 
and duller on his ear; then he lost all sense and memory — 
he ceased even to feel the night air on his face. How 
loug he lay there he never knew; when consciousness re- 
turned to him all was still; the moon was shining down 
clear as the day, the west wind was blowing softly among 
his hair. He staggered to his feet and leaned against the 
timber of the upper wall; the shelving, impenetrable dark- 
ness sloped below; above were the glories of a summer 
sky at midnight, around him the hills and woods were 
bathed in the silver light; he looked, and l\e remembered 
all. 

He had escaped his captors ; but for how long ? While 
yet there were some hours of the night left, he must find 
some surer refuge, or fall into their hands again. Yet it 
was strange that in this moment his own misery and his 
own peril were less upon him than a longing to see once 
more — and for the last time — the woman for whose sake 
he suffered this. Their love had had the. lightness and the 
languor of their world, and had had but little depth in it; 
yet in that hour of his supreme sacrifice to her he loved 
her as he had not loved in his life. 

Recklessness had always been latent in him, with all his 
serenity and impassiveness ; a reckless resolve entered him 
now — reckless to madness. Lightly and cautiously, though 
his sinews still ached, and his nerves still throbbed with the 
past strain, he let himself fall, hand over hand, as men go 
down a rope, along the woodwork to the ground. Once 
touching earth, off he glided, swiftly and noiselessly, keep- 
ing in the shadow of the walls all the length of the streets 
he took, and shunning every place, where any sort of tu- 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. H9 

mult could suggest the neighborhood of those who were 
out and hunting him down. As it chanced, they had 
taken to the open country ; he passed on unquestioned, 
and wound his way to the Kursaal. He remembered that 
to-night there was a masked ball, at which all the princely 
and titled world of Baden were present; to which he 
would himself have gone after the Russian dinner ; by the 
look of the stars he saw that it must be midnight or past, 
the ball would be now at its height. 

The dare-devil wilduess, and the cool quietude that were 
so intimately and intricately mingled in his nature could 
alone have prompted and projected such a thought and 
such an action as suggested themselves to him now; in the 
moment of his direst extremity, of his utter hopelessness, 
of his most imminent peril, he went — to take a last look 
at his mistress 1 Baden, for aught he knew, might be but 
one vast network to mesh in and to capture him ; yet he 
ran the risk with the dauntless temerity that had ever laid 
underneath the indifferentism and the indolence of his habits. 

Keeping always in the shadow, and moving slowly, so 
as to attract no notice from those he passed, he made his 
way deliberately, straight toward the blaze of light where 
all the gayety of the town was centered ; he reckoned, and 
rightly, as it proved, that the rumor of his story, the noise 
of his pursuit, would not have penetrated here as yet ; his 
own world would be still in ignorance. A moment, that 
was all he wanted, just to look upon a woman’s beauty ; he 
went forward daringly and tranquilly to its venture. If 
any had told him that a vein of romance was in him, he 
would have stared and thought them madmen ; yet some- 
thing almost as wild was in his instinct now. He had lost 
so much to keep her honor from attainder ; he wished to 
meet the gaze of her fair eyes once more before he went 
out to his exile. 

In one of the string of waiting carriages he saw a loose 
domino lying on the seat; he knew the liveries and the 
footmen, and he signed them to open the door. “ Tell 
Count Carl I have borrowed these,” he said to the servant, 
as he sprang into the vehicle, slipped the scarlet and black 
domino -on, took the mask, and left the carriage. The man 
touched his hat and said nothing; he knew Cecil well, as 


180 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


an intimate friend of his young Austrian master. In that 
masquerade guise he was safe, for the few minutes, at least, 
which were all he dared take. 

He went on, mingled among the glittering throng, and 
pierced his way to the ball-room, the Venetian mask cov- 
ering his features ; many spoke to him, by the scarlet and 
black colors they took him for the Austrian ; he answered 
none, and treaded his way among the blaze of hues, the 
joyous echoes of the music, the flutter of the silk and satin 
dominoes, the mischievous challenge of whispers. His 
eyes sought only one; he soon saw her, in the white and 
silver mask-dress, with the spray of carmine-hned eastern 
flowers, by which he had been told days ago to recognize 
her. A crowd of dominoes were about her, some masked, 
some not. Her eyes glanced through the envious disguise, 
and her lips were laughing. He approached her with all 
his old tact in the art d'arborer le cotillon; not hurriedly, 
so as to attract notice, but carefully, so as to glide into a 
place near her. 

“ You promised me this waltz,” he said very gently in 
her ear. “ I have come in time for it.” 

She recognized him by his voice, and turned from a 
French prince to rebuke him for his truancy, with gay 
raillery and mock anger. 

“ Forgive me, and let me have this one waltz — please 
do !” She glanced at him .a moment, and let him lead her 
out. 

“ No one has my step as you have it, Bertie,” she mur- 
mured, as they glided into the measure of the dance. 

She thought his glance fell sadly on her as he smiled. 

“No ? — but others will soon learn it.” 

Yet he had never treaded more deftly the maze of the 
waltzers, never trodden more softly, more swiftly, or with 
more science, the polished floor. The waltz was perfect; 
she did not know it was also a farewell. The delicate per- 
fume of her floating dress, the gleam of the scarlet flower- 
spray, the flash of the diamonds studding her domino, the 
fragrance of her lips as they breathed so near his own; 
they haunted him many a long year afterward. 

His voice was very calm, his smile was very gentle, his 
itep, as he swung easily through the intricacies of the cir« 


TIIE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


181 


cle, was none the less smooth and sure for the race that 
had so late strained his sinews to bursting; the woman he 
loved saw no change in him ; but as the waltz drew to its 
end, she felt his heart beat louder and quicker on her own, 
she felt his hand hold her own more closely, she felt his 
head drooped over her till his lips almost touched her 
brow; — it was his last embrace; no other could be given 
here, in the multitude of these courtly crowds. Then, 
with a few low-murmured words that thrilled her in their 
utterance, and echoed in her memory for years to come, he 
resigned her to the Austrian Grand Duke, who was her 
next claimant, and left her silently — forever. 

Less heroism has often proclaimed itself, with blatant 
trumpet to the world — a martyrdom. 

He looked back once as he passed from the ball-room 
—back to the sea of colors, to the glitter of light, to the 
moving hues, amid which the sound of the laughing intox- 
icating music seemed to float; to the glisten of the jewels, 
and the gold, and the silver, to the scene, in a word, of the 
life that would be his no more. He looked back in a long, 
lingering look, suck as a man may give the gladness of the 
earth before the gates of a prison close on him ; then he 
went out once more into the night, threw the domino and 
the mask back again into the carriage, and took his way, 
alone. 

He passed along till he had gained the shadow of a by- 
street, by a sheer unconscious instinct ; then he paused, 
and looked round him — what could he do ? He wondered 
vaguely if he were not dreaming ; the air seemed to reel 
about him, and the earth to rock ; the very force of con- 
trol he had sustained made the reaction stronger; he began 
to feel blind and stupefied. How could he escape ? The 
railway station would be guarded by those on the watch 
for him ; he had but a few pounds in his pocket, hastily 
slipped in as he had won them, “ money-down,” at ecarte 
that day; all avenues of escape were closed to him, and 
he knew that his limbs would refuse to carry him with any 
kind of speed farther. He had only the short, precious 
hours remaining of the night in which to make good his 
flight — and flight he must take to save those for whom he 
bed elected to sacrifice his life. Yet how ? and where ? 

10 


182 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


A hurried, noiseless footfall came after him ; Rake’s 
voice came breathless on his ear, while the man’s hand went 
up in the unforgotten soldier’s salute — 

“ Sir I no words. Follow me, and I’ll save you.” 

The one well-known voice was to him like water in a 
desert land; he would have trusted the speaker’s fidelity 
with his life. He asked nothing, said nothing, but fol- 
lowed rapidly and in silence, turning and doubling down 
a score of crooked passages, and burrowing at the last like 
a mole in a still, deserted place on the outskirts of the town, 
where some close-set trees grew at the back of stables and 
out-buildings. 

In a streak of the white moonlight stood two hunters, 
saddled ; one was Forest King. With a cry, Cecil threw 
his arms round the animal’s neck; he had no thought then 
except that he and the horse must part. 

“ Into saddle, sir ! quick as your life !” whispered Rake. 
“ We’ll be far away from this d — d den by morning.” 

Cecil looked at him like a man in stupor — his arm still 
ever the gray’s neck. 

“ He can have no stay in him ? He was dead-beat on 
the course.” 

“I know he was, sir; but he ain’t now; he was pisined ; 
but I’ve a trick with a ’oss that’ll set that sort o’ thing — 
if it ain’t gone too far, that is to say — right in a brace of 
shakes. I doctored him ; he’s hisself agen ; he’ll take you 
till he drops.” 

The King thrust his noble head closer in his master’s 
bosom, and made a little murmuring noise, as though he 
said, “ Try me I” 

“ God bless you, Rake !” Cecil said, huskily. “ But I 
cannot take him ; he will starve with me. And — how did 
you know of this ?” 

“ Beggin’ your pardon, your honor, he’ll eat chopped 
furze with you better than he’ll eat oats and hay along of 
a new master,” returned Rake, rapidly, tightening the 
girths. “ I don’t know nothin’, sir, save that I heard you 
was in a strait; I don’t want to know nothin’; but I sees 
them cursed cads a runnin’ of you to earth, and thinks I to 
myself, ‘ Come what will, the King will be the ticket for 
him.’ So I ran to your room unbeknown, packed a little 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


183 


valise, and got out the passports, then back again to the 
stables, and saddled him like lightnin’, and got ’em off, 
nobody knowing but Bill there. I seed you go by into the 
Kursaal, and laid in wait for you, sir. I made bold to 
bring Mother o’ Pearl for myself.” 

And Rake stopped, breathless and hoarse with passion 
and grief that he would no‘t utter. He had heard more 
than he said. 

“ For yourself?” echoed Cecil. “ What do you mean ? 
My good fellow, I am ruined. I shall be beggared from 
to-night — utterly. I cannot even help you, or keep you; 
but Lord Rockingham will do both for my sake.” 

The ci-devant soldier struck his heel into the earth with 
a fiery oath. 

“ Sir, there ain’t time for no words.- Where you goes I 
go. I’ll follow you while there’s a drop o’ blood in me. 
You was good to me when I was a poor devil that every 
one scouted; you shall have me with you to the last, if I 
die for it. There 1” 

Cecil’s voice shook as he answered. The fidelity touched 
him as adversity could not do. 

“ Rake, you are a noble fellow. I would take you, were 
it possible; but — in an hour I may be in a felon’s prison. 
If I escape that, I shall lead a life of such wretchedness 
as ” 


“ That’s not nothing to me, sir.” 

“But it is much to me,” answered Cecil. “As things 
have turned — life is over with me, Rake. What my own 
fate may be I have not the faintest notion — but let it be 
what it will, it must be a bitter one. I will not drag an- 
other into it.” 

“ If you send me away, I’ll shoot myself through the 
head, sir, that’s all.” 

“ You will do nothing of the kind. Go to Lord Rock- 
ingham, and ask him from me to take you into his service. 
You cannot have a kinder master.” 

“I don’t say nothing agen the Marquis, sir,” said Rake, 
doggedly, “he’s a right-on generous gentleman, but he 
aren’t you . Let me go with you, if it’s just to rub the 
King down. Lord, sir ! yorf don’t know what straits I’ve 
lived in — what a lot of things I can turn my hand to-— 


184 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


what a one I am to fit myself into any rat-hole, and make 
it spicy. Why, sir, I’m that born scamp I am — I’m a deal 
happier on the cross and getting my bread just any how, 
than I am when I’m in clover like you’ve kep’ me.” 

Rake’s eyes looked up wistfully and eager as a dog’s 
when he prays to be let out of kennel to follow the gun ; 
his voice was husky and agitated with a strong excitement. 
Cecil stood a moment, irresolute, touched and pained at 
the man’s spaniel-like affection — yet not yielding to it. 

“I thank you from my heart, Rake,” he said at length, 
“ but it must not be. I tell you my future life will be beg- 
gary ” 

“ You’ll want me anyways, sir,” retorted Rake, ashamed 
of the choking in his throat. “ I ask your pardon for in- 
terruptin’, but every second’s that precious like. Besides, 
sir, I’ve got to cut and run for my own sake. I’ve laid 
Willon’s head open down there in the loose box; and 
when he’s come to himself a pretty hue and cry he’ll raise 
after me. He painted the King, that’s what he did ; and 
I told him so, and I gev’ it to him — one — two — amazin’l 
Get into saddle, sir, for the Lord’s sake 1 and here, Bill — 
you run back, shut the door, and don’t let nobody know 
the ’osses are out till the mornin’. Then look like a muff 
as you are, and say nothin’ 1” 

The stable-boy stared, nodded assent, and sloped off. 
Rake threw himself across the brown mare. 

“ Now, sir 1 a steeple-chase for our lives 1 We’ll be 
leagues away by the day-dawn, and I’ve got their feed in 
the saddh3-bags, so that they’ll bait in the forests. Off, 
sir, for God’s sake, or the blackguards will be down on you 
again 1” 

■ As he spoke the clamor and tread of men of the town 
racing to the chase, were wafted to them on the night wind, 
drawing nearer and nearer ; Rake drew the reins tight in 
his hand in fury. 

“ There they come — the d — d beaks ! For the love of 
mercy, sir, don’t check now. Ten seconds more and they’ll 
be on you; off, off! — or by the Lord Harry, sir, you’ll 
make a murderer of me, and I’ll kill the first man that lays 
his hand on you I” 

The blaze of bitter blood was in the ex-Dragoon’s fiery 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


185 


face as the moon shone on it, and he drew out one of his 
holster pistols, and swung round in his saddle facing the 
narrow entrance of the lane, ready to shoot down the first 
of the pursuit whose shadow should darken the broad 
stream of white light that fell through the archway. 

Cecil looked at him, and paused no more ; but vaulted 
into the old familiar seat, and Forest King bore him away 
through the starry night, with the brown mare racing her 
best by his side. Away — through the sleeping shadows, 
through the broad beams of the moon, through the odor- 
ous scent of the crowded pines, through the soft breaking 
gray of the dawn ; away — to mountain solitudes and forest 
silence, and the shelter of lonely untracked ravines, and 
the woodland lairs they must share with wolf and boar; 
away — to flee with the flight of the hunted fox, to race 
with the wakeful dread of the deer; away — to what fate, 
who could tell ? 

Far and fast they rode through the night, never draw- 
ing rein. The horses laid well to their work, their youth 
and their mettle were roused, and they needed no touch of 
spur, but neck and neck dashed down through the sullen 
gray of the dawn and the breaking flush of the first sun- 
rise. On the hard parched earth, on the dew-laden moss, 
on the stretches of wayside sward, on the dry white dust 
of the ducal roads, their hoofs thundered, unfollowed, un- 
echoed the challenge of no pursuit stayed them, and they 
obeyed the call that was made on their strength with good 
and gallant willingness. Far and fast they rode, happily 
knowing the country well; now through the darkness of 
night, now through the glimmering daybreak. Tall walls 
of fir-crowned rocks passed by them like a dream ; beet- 
ling cliffs and summer foliage swept past their eyes all 
fused and dim; gray piles of monastic buildings with the 
dull chimes tolling the hour, flashed on their sight to be 
lost in a moment; corn-lands yellowing for the sickle, fields 
with the sheaves set-up, orchards ruddy with fruit, and 
black barn-roofs lost in leafy nests, villages lying among 
their hills like German toys caught in the hollow of a guard- 
ing hand, masses of forests stretching wide, somber and 
silent and dark as a tomb; the shine of water’s silvery line 
where it flowed in a rocky channel — they passed them all 
16 * 


186 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


in the soft gray of the waning night, in the white veil of 
the fragrant mists, in the stillness of sleep and of peace. 
Passed them, racing for more than life, flying with the 
speed of the wind. 

“ I failed him to-day through my foes and his,” Forest 
King thought, as he laid his length out in his mighty 
stride. “But I love him well ; I will save him to-night.” 
And save him the brave brute did. The grass was so 
sweet and so short, he longed to stop for a mouthful ; the 
brooks looked so clear and so brown, he longed to pause 
for a drink; renewed force and reviving youth filled his 
loyal veins with their fire ; he could have thrown himself 
down on that mossy turf, and had a roll in its thyme and 
its lichens for sheer joy that his strength had come back. 
But he would yield to none of these longings ; he held on 
for his master’s sake, and tried to think, as he ran, that this 
was only a piece of play — only a steeple-chase, for a silver 
vase and a lady’s smile, such as he and his rider had so 
often run for, and so often won, in those glad hours of 
the crisp winter noons of English Shires far away. He 
turned his eyes on the brown mare’s and she turned hers on 
his ; they were good friends in the stables at home, and 
they understood one another now. “ If I were what I was 
yesterday, she wouldn’t run even with me,” thought the 
King; but they were doing good work together, and he 
was too true a knight and too true a gentleman to be jeal- 
ous of Mother o’ Pearl, so they raced neck and neck 
through the dawn; with the noisy clatter of water-mill 
wheels, or the distant sound of a woodman’s axe, or the 
tolling bell of a convent clock, the only sound on the air 
save the beat of the flying hoofs. 

Away they went, mile on mile, league on league, till the 
stars faded out in the blaze of the sun, and the tall pines 
rose out of the gloom. Either his pursuers were baffled 
and distanced, or no hue and cry was yet after him ; 
nothing arrested them as they swept on, and the silent 
land lay in the stillness of morning ere toil and activity 
awakened. It was strangely still, strangely lonely, and 
the echo of the gallop seemed to beat on the stirless, 
breathless solitude. As the light broke and grew clearet 
and clearer, Cecil’s face in it was white as death as he gal- 




THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


18 t 


loped through the mists, a hunted man, on whose head a 
price was set ; but it was quite calm still, and very reso- 
lute — there was no “harking back ” in it. 

They had raced nigh twenty English miles by the time 
the chimes of a village were striking six o’clock; it was 
the only group of dwellings they had ventured near in 
their flight; the leaded lattices were thrust open with a 
hasty clang, and women’s heads looked out as the iron 
tramp of the hunters’ feet struck fire from the stones. A 
few cries were raised ; one burgher called them to know 
their errand; they answered nothing, but traversed the 
street with lightning speed, gone from sight almost ere 
they were seen. A league farther on was a wooded bot- 
tom, all dark and silent, with a brook murmuring through 
it under the leafy shade of lilies and the tangle of water- 
plants ; there Cecil checked the King and threw himself 
out of saddle. 

“ He is not quite himself yet,” he murmured, as he . 
loosened the girths and held back the delicate head from 
the perilous cold of the water to which the horse stretched 
so eagerly; he thought more of Forest King than he 
thought, even in that hour, of himself. He did all that 
was needed with his own hands ; fed him with the corn 
from the saddle-bags, cooled him gently, led him to drink 
a cautious draught from the bubbling little stream, then let 
him graze and rest under the shade of the aromatic pines 
and the deep bronze leaves of the copper beeches ; it was 
almost dark, so heavy and thickly laced were the branches, 
and exquisitely tranquil in the heart of the hilly country, 
in the peace of the early day, with the rushing of the forest 
brook the sole sound that was heard, and the everlasting 
sighing of the pine-boughs overhead. 

Cecil leaned awhile silently against one of the great 
gnarled trunks, and Rake affected to busy himself with the 
mare ; in his heart was a tumult of rage, a volcano of cu- 
riosity, a pent-up storm of anxious amaze, but he would 
have let Mother o’ Pearl brain him with a kick of her iron 
plates rather than press a single look that should seem 
like doubt, or seem like insult in adversity to his fallen 
master. 

Cecil’s eyes, drooped and brooding, gazed a long half- 


188 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


hour down in silence into the brook bubbling at his feet ; 
then he lifted his head and spoke — with a certain formality 
and command in his voice, as though he gave an order on 
parade. 

“ Rake, listen, and do precisely what I bid you, neither 
more nor less. The horses cannot accompany me, nor you 
either ; I must go henceforth where they would starve, and 
you would do worse. I do not take the King into suffer- 
ing, nor you into temptation. ” 

Rake, who at the tone had fallen unconsciously into 
the attitude of “attention,” giving the salute with his old 
military instinct, opened his lips to speak in eager protes- 
tation; Cecil put'up his hand. 

“ I have decided ; nothing you can say will alter me. We 
are near a by-station now ; if I find none there to prevent 
me, I shall get away by the first train ; to hide in these 
woods is out of the question. You will return by easy 
stages to Baden, and take the horses at once to Lord Rock- 
ingham. They are his now. Tell him my last wish was 
that he should take you into his service ; and he will be a 
better master to you than I have ever been. As for the 

King ” his lips quivered, and his voice shook a little 

despite himself, “ he will be safe with him. I shall go into 
some foreign service — Austrian, Russian, Mexican, which- 
ever be open to me. I would not risk such a horse as mine 
to be sold, ill treated, tossed from owner to owner, sent in 
his old age to a knacker’s yard, or killed in a skirmish by 
a cannon-shot. Take both him and the mare back, and 
go back yourself. Believe me, I thank you from my heart 
for your noble offer of fidelity, but accept it I never shall.” 

A dead pause came after his words ; Rake stood m-ute; 
a curious look, half dogged, half wounded, but very reso- 
lute, had come on his face. Cecil thought him pained, and 
spoke with an infinite gentleness : 

“ My good fellow, do not regret it, or fancy I have no 
gratitude to you. I feel your loyalty deeply, and I know 
all you would willingly suffer for me ; but it must not be. 
The mere offer of what you would do has been quite testi- 
mony enough of your truth and your worth. It is impos- 
sible for me to tell you what has so suddenly changed my 
fortunes j it is sufficient that for the future I shall be, if I 


TIIE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


189 


live, what you were — a private soldier in an army that 
needs a sword. But let my fate be what it will, I go to it 
alone. Spare me more speech, and simply obey my last 
command.” 

Quiet as the words were, there was a resolve in them not 
to be disputed, an authority not to be rebelled against. 
Rake stared, and looked at him blankly ; in this man who 
spoke to him with so subdued but so irresistible a power of 
command, he could scarcely recognize the gay, indolent, 
indulgent, pococurante Guardsman, whose most serious 
anxiety had been the set of a lace tie, the fashion of his 
hunting dress, or the choice of the gold arabesques for his 
smoking-slippers. 

Rake was silent a moment, then his hand touched his 
cap again. 

“Very well, sir,” and without opposition or entreaty, he 
turned to resaddle the mare. 

Our natures are oddly inconsistent. Cecil would not 
have taken the man into exile, and danger, and temptation, 
and away from comfort and an honest life, for any consid- 
eration ; yet it gave him something of a pang that Rake 
was so soon dissuaded from following him, and so easily 
convinced of the folly of his fidelity. But he had dealt 
himself a far deadlier one when he had resolved to part 
forever from the King. He loved the horse better than he 
loved anything, — fed from his hand in foalhood, reared, 
broken, and trained under his own eye and his own care, 
he had had a truer welcome from those loving, lustrous eyes, 
than all his mistresses ever gave him. He had had so 
many victories, so many hunting-runs, so many pleasant 
days of winter and of autumn, with Forest King for his 
comrade and companion ! He could better bear to sever 
from all other things than from the stable-monarch, whose 
brave heart never failed him, and whose honest love was 
always his. 

He stretched his hand out with his accustomed signal, 
the King lifted his head where he grazed, and came to him 
with the murmuring noise of pleasure he always gave at 
his master’s caress, and pressed his forehead against Cecil’s 
breast, and took such tender heed, such earnest solicitude, 
not to harm him with a touch of the mighty fore hoofs, as 


190 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


those only who care for and know horses well will under- 
stand in its relation. 

Cecil threw his arm over his neck, and leant his own 
head down on it, so that his face was hidden. He stood 
motionless so many moments, and the King never stirred, 
but only pressed closer and closer against his bosom, as 
though he knew that this was his eternal farewell to his 
master. But little light came there, the boughs grew so 
thickly; and it was still and solitary as a desert in the 
gloom of the meeting trees. 

There have been many idols, idols of gold, idols of clay, 
less pure, less true than the brave and loyal-hearted beast 
from whom he parted now. 

He stood motionless a while longer, and where his face 
was hidden, the gray silken mane of the horse was wet with 
great slow tears that forced themselves through his closed 
eyes ; 'then he laid his lips on the King’s forehead, as he 
might have touched the brow of the woman he loved ; and 
with a backward gesture of his hand to his servant, 
plunged down into the deep slope of netted boughs and 
scarce penetrable leafage, that swung back into their places, 
and shrouded him from sight with their thick unbroken 
screen. 

“ He’s forgot me right and away in the King,” mur- 
mured Rake, as he led Forest King away slowly and sor- 
rowfully, while the hunter pulled and fretted to force his 
way to his master. “Well, it’s only natural like. I’ve 
cause to care for him, and plenty on it ; but he ain’t no 
sort of reason to think about me.” 

That was the way the philosopher took his wound. 

Alone, Cecil flung himself full length down on the turf 
beneath the beech woods, his arms thrown forward, his 
face buried in the grass, all gay with late summer forest 
blossoms; for the first time the whole might of the ruin 
that had fallen on him was understood by him ; for the 
first time it beat him down beneath it as the overstrained 
tension of nerve and of self-restraint had their inevitable 
reaction. He knew what this thing was which lie had 
done — he had given up his whole future. 

Though he had spoken lightly to his servant of his in- 
tention to enter a foreign army, he knew himself how few 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


101 


the chances were that he could ever do so. It was possi- 
ble that Rockingham might so exert his influence that he 
would be left unpursued, but unless this chanced so (and 
Baroni had seemed resolute to forego no part of his de- 
mands), the search for him would be in the hands of the 
law, and the wiles of secret police and of detectives’ re- 
sources spread too far and finely over the world for him 
to have scarcely a hope of ultimate escape. 

If he sought France, the Extradition Treaty would de- 
liver him up; Russia — Austria — Prussia were of equal 
danger; he would be identified, and given up to trial. 
Into the Italian service he knew many a scoundrel was 
received unquestioned; and he might try the Western 
world ; 'though he had no means to pay the passage, he 
might work it; he was a good sailor; yachts had been 
twice sunk under him, by steamers, in the Solent and the 
Spezzia, and his own schooner had once been fired at by 
mistake for a blockade runner, when he had brought to, 
and given them a broadside from his two shotted guns 
before he would signal them their error. 

As these things swept disordered and aimless through 
his mind, he wondered if a nightmare were upon him ; he, 
the darling of Belgravia, the Guards’ champion, the lover 
of Lady Guenevere, to be here outlawed and friendless, 
wearily racking his brains to solve whether he had seaman- 
ship enough to be taken before the mast, or could stand 
before the tambour-major of a French regiment, with a 
chance to serve the same flag ! 

For awhile he lay there like a drunken man, heavy and 
motionless, his brow resting on his arm, his face buried in 
the grass; he had parted more easily with the woman he 
loved than he had parted with Forest King. The chimes 
of some far-off monastery, or castle-campanile, swung 
lazily in the morning stillness; the sound revived him, and 
recalled to him how little time there was if he would seek 
the flight that had begun on impulse and was continued in 
a firm unshrinking resolve: he must go on, and on, and 
on; he must burrow like a fox, hide like a beaten cur; he 
must put leagues between him and all who had ever known 
him; he must sink his very name, and identity, and exist- 
ence, under some impenetrable obscurity, or the burden he 


192 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


had taken up for others’ sake would be uselessly borne. 
There must be action of some sort or other, instant and 
unerring. 

“ It don’t matter,” he thought, with the old idle indiffer- 
ence, oddly becoming in that extreme moment the very 
height of stoic philosophy, without any thought or effort 
to be such; ‘‘I was going to the bad of my own accord; 
I must have cut and run for the debts, if not for this ; it 
would have been the same thing, anyway, so it’s just as 
well to do it for them. Life’s over, and I’m a fool that I 
don’t shoot myself,” 

But there was too imperious a spirit in the Itoyallieu 
blood to let him give in to disaster, and do this. He rose 
slowly, staggering a little, and feeling blinded and dazzled 
with the blaze of the morning sun as he went out of the 
beech wood. There were the marks of the hoofs on the 
damp, dewy turf; his lips trembled a little as he saw them ; 

. — he would never ride the horse again ! 

Some two miles, more or less, lay between him and the 
railway. He was not certain of his way, and he felt a 
sickening exhaustion on him ; he had been without food 
since his breakfast before the race. A gamekeeper’s hut 
stood near the entrance of the wood ; he had much reck- 
lessness in him, and no caution. He entered through the 
half-open door, and asked the keeper, who was eating his 
sausage and drinking his Lager, for a meal. 

“I’ll give you one if you’ll bring me down that hen- 
harrier,” growled the man in south German, pointing to 
the bird that was sailing far off, a mere speck in the sunny 
sky. 

Cecil took the rifle held out to him, and without seeming 
even to pause to take aim, fired. The bird dropped like a 
stone through the air into the distant woods. There was 
no tremor in his wrist, no uncertainty in his measure. The 
keeper stared ; the shot was one he had thought beyond 
any man’s range, and he set food and drink before his 
guest with a crestfallen surprise, oddly mingled with ven- 
eration. 

“You might have let me buy my breakfast, without 
making me do murder,” said Bertie, quietly, as he tried to 
eat. The meal was coarse — he could scarcely touch it, 


* m 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 

but he drank the beer down thirstily, and took a crust of 
bread. He slipped his ring, a great sapphire graven with 
his crest, off his finger, and held it out to the man. 

“That is worth fifty double-Fredericks ; will you take 
it in exchange for your rifle and some powder and ball ?” 

The German stared again, open mouthed, and clinched 
the bargain eagerly. He did not know anything about 
gems, but the splendor of this dazzled his eye, while he 
had guns more than enough, and could get many others at 
his lord’s cost. Cecil fastened a shot-belt round him, took 
a powder-flask and cartridge-case, and with a few words 
of thanks, went on his way. 

Now that he held the rifle in his hand, he felt ready for 
the work that was before him; if hunted to bay, at any 
rate he could now have a Struggle for his liberty. The 
keeper stood bewildered, gazing blankly after him down 
the vista of pines. 

“ Hein 1 hein 1” he growled, as he looked at the sapphire 
sparkling in his broad brown palm; “I never saw such a 
with-lavishness-wasteful-and-with-courteous-speech-laconic 
gentleman! I wish I had not let him have the gun; he 
will take his own life, belike; ach, Gott ! he will take his 
own life !” 

But Cecil had not bought it for that end — though he 
had called himself a fool for not sending a bullet through 
his brain, to quench in eternal darkness this ruined and 
wretched life that alone remained to him. He walked on 
through the still summer dawn, with the width of the 
country stretching sun-steeped around him. The sleep- 
lessness, the excitement, the misery, the wild running of 
the past night had left him strengthless and racked with 
pain, but he knew that he must press onward or be caught, 
sooner or later, like netted game in the poacher’s silken 
mesh. Where to go, what to do, he knew no more than if 
he were a child ; everything had always been ready to his 
hand, the only thought required of him had been how to 
amuse himself and avoid being bored ; now thrown alone 
on a mighty calamity, and brought face to face with the 
severity and emergency of exertion, he was like a pleasure- 
boat beaten under high billows, and driven far out to sea by 
the madness of a raging nor’-wester. He had no concep- 

n n 


194 9 


UNDER TWO FLAGS, 


tion what to do; he had but one resolve — to keep his 
secret; if to do it he killed himself with the rifle his sap- 
phire ring had bought. 

Carelessly daring always, he sauntered now into the 
station for which he had made, without a sign on him that 
could attract observation; he wore still the violet velvet 
Spanish-like dress, the hessians, and the broad-leafed felt 
hat with an eagle’s feather fastened in it, that he had worn 
at the races, and with the gun in his hand there was nothing 
to distinguish him from any tourist “milor,” except that in 
one hand he carried his own valise. He cast a rapid glance 
around; no warrant for his apprehension, no announce- 
ment of his personal appearance had preceded him here; 
he was safe — safe in that; safer still in the fact that the 
train rushed in so immediately on his arrival there, that 
the few people about had no time to notice or speculate 
upon him. The coupe was empty, by a happy chance ; he 
took it, throwing his money down with no heed that when 
the little he had left was once expended he would be pen- 
niless, and the train whirled on with him, plunging into 
the heart of forest and mountain, and the black gloom of 
tunnels, and the golden seas of corn-harvest. He was 
alone ; and he leant his head on his hands, and thought, 
and thought, and thought, till the rocking, and the rush- 
ing, and the whirl, and the noise of the steam on his ear 
and the giddy gyrations of his brain in the exhaustion of 
overstrung exertion, conquered thought. With the beat- 
ing of the engine seeming to throb like the great swinging 
of a pendulum through his mind, and the whirling of the 
country passing by him like a confused phantasmagoria, 
his eyes closed, his aching limbs stretched themselves out 
to rest, a heavy dreamless sleep fell on him, the sleep of 
intense bodily fatigue, and he knew no more. 

Gendarmes awoke him to see his visa. He showed it 
them by sheer mechanical instinct, and slept again in that 
dead weight of slumber the moment he was alone. When 
he had taken his ticket and they had asked him to where 
it should be, he had answered to their amaze, “to the 
farthest place it goes,” and he was borne on now unwitting 
where it went; through the rich champaign and the barren 
plains, through the reddening vintage, and over the dreary 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


195 


plateaux; through antique cities, and across broad flowing 
rivers ; through the cave of riven rocks, and above nest- 
ling, leafy valleys; on and on, on and on, while he knew 
nothing, as the opium-like sleep of intense weariness held 
him in its stupor. 

He awoke at last with a start ; it was evening ; the stilly 
twilight was settling over all the land, and the train was 
still rushing onward, fleet as the wind. His eyes, as they 
opened dreamily and blindly, fell on a face half obscured 
in the gloaming; he leaned forward bewildered and doubt- 
ing his senses. 

“Rakel” 

Rake gave the salute hurriedly and in embarrassment. 

“ It’s I, sir 1 — yes, sir.” 

Cecil thought himself dreaming still. 

“ You 1 You had my orders?” 

“Yes, sir, I had your orders,” murmured the ex-soldier, 
more confused than he had ever been in the whole course 
of his audacious life, “and they was the first I ever diso- 
beyed — they was. You see, sir, they was just what I 
couldn't swallow nohow — that’s the real right down fact! 
Send me to the devil, Mr. Cecil, for you, and I’ll go at the 
first biddin’, but leave you just when things are on the 
cross for you, damn me if I will ! — beggiu’ your pardon, 
sir !” 

And Rake, growing fiery and eloquent, dashed his cap 
down on the floor of the coupe with an emphatic declara- 
tion of resistance. Cecil looked at him in silence; he was 
not certain still whether this were not a fantastic folly ho 
was dreaming. 

“Damn me if I will, Mr. Cecil ! You won’t keep me — 
very well ; but you can’t prevent me follerin’ of you, and 
foller you I will ; and so there’s no more to be said about 
it, sir, but just to let me have my own lark as one may 
say. You said you’d go to the station, I went there; you 
took your ticket, I took my ticket. I’ve been traveling 
behind you till about two hours ago, then I looked at you, 
you was asleep, sir. ‘ I don’t think my master’s quite well,’ 
says I to Guard, ‘I’d like to get in there along of him.’ 
‘Get in with you, then,’ says he (only we was jabbering 
that willainous tongue o’ theirs), for he sees the name oa 


196 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


my traps is the same as that on your traps — and in I get. 
Now, Mr. Cecil, let me say one word for all, and don’t 
think I’m a insolent ne’er-do-well for having been and 
gone and disobeyed you ; but you was good to me when I 
was sore in want of it; you was even good to my dog — 
rest his soul, the poor beast 1 there never were a braver ! — 
and stick to you I will, till you kick me away like a cur. 
The truth is, it’s only being near of you, sir, that keeps 
me straight; if I was to leave you I should become a bad 
’un again, right and away. Don’t send me from you, sir, 
as you took mercy on me once !” 

Rake’s voice shook a little toward the close of his ha- 
rangue, and in the shadows of evening light, as the train 
plunged through the gathering gloom, his ruddy bright 
bronzed face looked very pale and wistful. 

Cecil stretched out his hand to him in silence that spoke 
better than words. 

Rake hung his head. 

“No, sir; you’re a gentleman, and I’ve been an awful 
scamp ! It’s enough honor for me that you would do it. 
When I’m more worth it, ’phraps — but that won’t never 
be.” 

“ You are worth it now, my gallant fellow.” His voice 
was very low; the man’s loyalty touched him keenly. “It 
was oniy for yourself, Rake, that I ever wished you to 
leave me.” 

“God bless you, sir,” said Rake, passionately, “them 
words are better nor ten tosses of brandy ! You see, sir, 
I’m so spry and happy in a wild life, I am, and if so be as 
you go to them American parts as you spoke on, why I 
know ’em just as well as I know Newmarket Heath, every 
bit 1 They’re terrible rips in them parts, kill you as soon 
as look at you ; it makes things uncommon larky out there, 
uncommon spicy. You arn’t never sure but what there’s 
a bowie-knife a waiting for you.” 

With which view of the delights of Western life, Rake, 
“feeling like a fool,” as he thought to himself, for which 
reason he had diverged into Argentine memories, applied 
himself to the touching and examining of the rifle with 
that tenderness which only gunnery love and lore produce. 

Cecil sat silent awhile, his head drooped down on his 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 197 

hands, while the evening deepened to night. At last he 
looked up. 

“ The King ? Where is he ?” 

Rake flushed shamefacedly under his tanned skin. 

“Beggin’ your pardon, sir, behind you.” 

“ Behind me ?” 

“ Yes, sir ; him and the brown mare. I couldn’t do not 
nothin’ else with ’em, you see, sir, so I shipped him along 
with us; they don’t care for the train a bit', bless their 
hearts, and I’ve got a sharp boy a minding of ’em. You 
can easily send ’em on to England from Paris if you’re 
determined to part with ’em, but you know the King al-’ 
ways was fond of drums and trumpets and that like. You 
remember, sir, when he was a colt we broke him into it 
and taught him a bit of manoeuvring, ’cause till you found 
what pace he had in him, you’d thought of makin’ a charger 
of him. He loves the noise of soldiering — he do; and if 
he thought you was goin’ away without him, he’d break 
his heart, Mr. Cecil, sir. It was all I could do to keep 
him from follerin’ of you this morning, he sawed my arms 
off a’most.” 

With which, Rake, conscious that he had been guilty of 
unpardonable disobedience and outrageous interference, 
hung his head over the gun, a little anxious and a good 
deal ashamed. 

Cecil smiled a little despite himself. 

“ Rake, you will do for no service, I am afraid ; you are 
terribly insubordinate 1” 

He had not the heart to say more ; the man’s fidelity 
was too true to be returned with rebuke ; and stronger 
than all surprise and annoyance was a strange mingling of 
pain and pleasure in him to think that the horse he loved 
so well was still so near him, the comrade of his adversity 
as he had been the companion of his happiest hours. 

“ These things will keep him a few days,” he thought, 
as he looked at his hunting-watch, and the priceless pearl 
in each of his wristband-studs. He would have pawned 
every atom he had about him to have had the King with 
him a week longer. 

The night fell, the stars came out, the storm-rack of a 
coming tempest drifted over the sky, the train rushed on- 

17 * 


198 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ward through the thickening darkness, through the spec- 
tral country — it was like his life, rushing headlong down 
into impenetrable gloom. The best, the uttermost, that he 
could look for was a soldier’s grave, far away under some 
foreign soil. 

****** 

A few evenings later the Countess Guenevere stood 
alone in her own boudoir in her Baden suite; she was 
going to dine with an Archduchess of Russia, and the 
splendid jewels of her House glittered through 'the black 
shower of her laces, and crowned her beautiful glossy hair, 
•her delicate imperial head. In her hands was a letter; — 
oddly written in pencil on a leaf torn out of a betting- 
book, but without a tremor or a change in the writing it- 
self. And as she stood a shiver shook her frame; in the 
solitude ef her lighted and luxurious chamber, her cheek 
grew pale, her eyes grew dim. 

“ To refute the charge,” ran the last words of what was 
at best but a fragment, “ I must have broken my promise 
to you, and have compromised your name. Keeping si- 
lence myself, but letting the trial take place, law-inquiries, 
so execrable and so minute, would soon have traced through 
others that I was with you that evening. To clear myself 
I must have attainted your name with public slander, and 
drawn this horrible ordeal on you before the world. Let 
ue be thought guilty. It matters little. Henceforth I 
shall be dead to all who know me, and my ruin would have 
exiled me without this. Do not let an hour of grief for 
me mar your peace, my dearest ; think of me with no pain, 
Beatrice, only with some memory of our past love. I have 
not strength yet to say — forget me ; and yet, — if it be for 
your happiness, — blot out from your remembrance all 
thought of what we have been to one another; all thought 
of me and of my life, save to remember now and then that 
I was dear to you.” 

The words grew indistinct before her sight, they touched 
the heart of the world-worn coquette, of the victorious 
sovereign, to the core ; she trembled greatly as she read 
them. For, — in her hands was his fate. Though no hint 
of this was breathed in his farewell letter, she knew that 
with a word she could clear him, free him, and call him 


THE KING’S LAST SERVICE. 


199 


back from exile and shame, give him once more honor and 
guiltlessness in the sight of the world. With a word she 
could do this: his life was in the balance that she held as 
utterly as though it were now hers to sign, or to destroy 
his death-warrant. It rested with her to speak, and to say 
he had no guilt. 

But to do this she must sacrifice herself. She stood 
mute, irresolute, a shudder running through her till her 
diamonds shook in the light; the heavy tears stole slowly 
down one by one and fell upon the blurred and blackened 
paper, her heart ached with an exceeding bitterness. Then 
shudderingly still, and as though there were a coward crime 
in the action, her hand unclosed, and let the letter fall into 
the spirit flame of a silver lamp burning by ; the words 
that were upon it merited a better fate, a fonder cherish- 
ing, but — they would have compromised her. She let them 
fall, and burn, and wither. With them she gave up his 
life to its burden of shame, to its fate of exile. 

She would hear his crime condemned, and her lips would 
not open ; she would hear his name aspersed, and her voice 
would not be raised; she would know that he dwelt in 
misery, or died under foreign suns unhonored and un- 
mourned, while tongues around her would babble of his 
disgrace, — and she would keep her peace. 

She loved him — yes ; but she loved better the dignity 
in which the world held her, and the diamonds from which 
the law would divorce her if their love were known. 

She sacrificed him for her reputation and her jewels; 
the choice was thoroughly a woman’s. 


200 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

IN THE CAFE OF THE CHASSEURS. 

The red-hot light of the after-glow still burned on the 
waters of the bay, and shed its Egyptian-like luster on the 
city that lies in the circle of the Sahel, with the Mediter- 
ranean so softly lashing with its violet waves the feet of 
the white sloping town. The sun had sunk down in fire 
— the sun that once looked over those waters on the le- 
gions of Scipio, and the iron brood of Hamilcar, and that 
now gave its luster on the folds of the French flags as they 
floated above the shipping of the harbor, and on the glitter 
of the French arms, as a squadron of the army of Algeria 
swept back over the hills to their barracks. Pell-mell in 
its fantastic confusion, its incongruous blending, its forced 
mixture of two races, that will touch but never mingle, 
that will be chained together but will never assimilate, the 
Gallic-Moorish life of the city poured out; all the coloring 
of Haroun al Raschid scattered broadcast among Parisian 
fashion and French routine. Away, yonder on the spurs 
and tops of the hills, the green sea-pines seemed to pierce 
the transparent air; in the Cabash old dreamy Arabian 
legends poetic as Hafiz seem still to linger here and there 
under the foliage of hanging gardens or the picturesque 
curves of broken terraces; in the distance the brown 
rugged Kabyl mountains lay like a couched camel, and far 
off, against the golden haze a single palm rose, at a few 
rare intervals, with its drooped curled leaves, as though to 
recall amid the shame of foreign domination, that this was 
once the home of Hannibal, the Africa that had made 
Rome tremble. 

In the straight white boulevarts, as in the winding an- 
cient streets, under the huge barn-like walls of barracks, 
as beneath the marvelous mosaics of mosques, the strange 
bizarre conflict of European and Oriental life spread its 


IN THE CAFE OF THE CHASSEURS. 2J0l 

panorama. Staff officers, all a glitter with crosses, gal- 
loped past; mules, laden with green maize and driven by 
lean brown Bedouins, swept past the plate-glass windows 
of bonbon shops; grave white-bearded sheiks drank petits 
verves in the guinguettes ; sapeurs, Chasseurs, Zouaves, 
cantinibres, all the varieties of French military life, mingled 
with jet-black Soudans, desert kings wrathful and silent, 
eastern women shrouded in haick and serroual, eagle-eyed 
Arabs flinging back snow-white burnous, and handling 
ominously the jeweled hilts of their cangiars. Alcazar 
chansons rang out from the cafes, while in their midst 
stood the mosque, that had used to resound with tho 
Muezzin; Bijou-blondine and Bebee La-la and all the 
sister-heroines of demi-monde dragged their voluminous 
Paris-made dresses side by side with Moorish beauties, 
who only dared show the gleam of their bright black eyes 
through the yasmak; the reverberes* were lit in the Place 
du Gouvernement, and a group fit for the days of Solyman 
the Magnificent sat under the white marble beauty of the 
Mohammedan church ; “Bien n J est sacrepour un sapeurV * 
was being sung to a circle of sous-officiers,^ close in the 
ear of a patriarch serenely majestic as Abraham ; gas- 
lights were flashing, cigar shops were filling, newspapers 
were being read, the Rigolboche was being danced, com- 
mis-voyageurs% were chattering with grisettes, drums were 
beating, trumpets were sounding, bands were playing, and, 
amid it all, grave men were dropping on their square of 
carpet to pray, brass trays of sweetmeats were passing, 
ostrich eggs were dangling, henna-tipped fingers were 
drawing the envious veil close, and noble oriental shadows 
were gliding to and fro through the open doors of the 
mosques, like a picture of the “Arabian Nights,” like a 
poem of dead Islamism ; — in a word, it was Algiers at 
evening. 

In one of the cafes there, a mingling of all the nations 
under the sun were drinking demi-tasses, absinthe, ver- 
mout, or old wines, in the comparative silence that had 
succeeded to a song, sung by a certain favorite of tt»e 


* Lamps. f Non-commissioned officers. 

| Commercial travelers. 


202 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Spanis, known as Loo-Loo-j’n-m’en soucie-guere from 
Mile. Loo-Loo’s well-known habits of independence and 
bravado, which last had gone once so far as shooting a man 
through the chest in the Rue Bab-al-Oued, and setting 
all the gendarmes and sergeants-de-ville at defiance after- 
ward. Half a dozen of that famous regiment the Chas- 
seurs d’Afrique were gathered together, some with their 
feet resting on the little marble-topped tables, some read- 
ing the French papers, all smoking their inseparable com- 
panions — the brules-gueles ;* — fine stalwart sun-burnt fel- 
lows, with faces and figures that the glowing colors of their 
uniform set off to the best advantage. 

“ Loo-Loo was in fine voice to-night,” said one. 

“ Yes, she took plenty of cognac before she sang ; that 
always clears her voice,” said a second. 

“And I think that did her spirits good, shooting that 
Kabyl,” said a third. “ By-the-way, did he die ?” 

“ N’sais pas,” said the third, with a shrug of his shoul- 
ders; “Loo-Loo’s a good aim.” 

“ Sac a papier, yes ! Rire-pour-tout taught her.” 

“Ah ! There never was a shot like Rire-pour-tout. 
When he went out, he always asked his adversary, ‘Where 
will you like it? your lungs, your heart, your brain? It 
is quite a matter of choice ;’ — and whichever they chose, 
he shot there. Le pauvre Rire-pour-tout ! he was always 
good-natured.” 

“And did he never meet his match?” asked a sous- 
officier of the line. 

The speaker looked down on the piou-piouf with su- 
perb contempt, and twisted his moustaches. “Monsieur ! 
how could he ? He was a Chasseur.” 

“But, if he never met his match, how did he die ?” pur- 
sued the irreverent piou-piou — a little wiry man, black as 
a berry, agile as a monkey, tough and short as a pipe- 
stopper. 

The magnificent Chasseur laughed in his splendid dis- 
dain. “A piou-piou never killed him, that I promise you. 
He spitted half a dozen of you before breakfast, to give 


* Short pipes, 
f Infantry-soldier. 


IN THE CAF& OF THE CHASSEURS. 203 

him a relish. How did Rire-pour-tout die ? I will tell 
you.” 

He dipped his long moustaches into a beaker of still 
champagne : Claude, Yisconte de Chanrellon, though in 
the ranks, could afford those luxuries. 

“ He died this way, did Rire-pour-tout I Dieu de Dieu ! 
a very good way to. Send us all the like when our time 
comes ! We were out yonder” (and he nodded his hand- 
some head outward to where the brown seared plateaux 
and the Kabyl mountains lay). “We were hunting Arabs, 
of course, — pot-shooting rather, as we never got nigh 
enough to their main body to have a clear charge at them. 
Rire-pour-tout grew sick of it. * This won’t do,’ he said ; 
‘here’s two weeks gone by, and I haven’t shot anything but 
kites and jackals. I shall get my hand out.’ For Rire- 
pour-tout, as the army knows, somehow or other, generally 
potted his man every day, and he missed it terribly. Well, 
what did he do ? He rode off one morning and found out 
the Arab camp, and he waved a white flag for a parley. 
He didn’t dismount, but he just faced the Arabs and spoke 
to their Sheik. ‘Things are slow,’ he said to them. ‘I 
have come for a little amusement. Set aside six of your 
best warriors, and I’ll fight them one after another for the 
honor of France, and a drink of brandy to the conqueror.’ 
They demurred ; they thought it unfair to him to have six 
to one. ‘Ah !’ he laughs, ‘you have heard of Rire-pour- 
tout, and you are afraid 1’ That put their blood up : 
they said they would fight him before all his Chasseurs. 

‘ Come, and welcome,’ said Rire-pour-tout ; ‘ and not a hair 
of your beards shall be touched except by me.’ So the 
bargain was made for an hour before sunset that night. 
Mort de Dieu 1 that was a grand duel !” 

He dipped his long moustaches again into another beaker 
of still. Talking was thirsty work : the story was well 
known in all the African army, but the piou-piou, having 
served in China, was new to the soil. 

“The General was ill pleased when he heard it, and half 
for arresting Rire-pour-tout; but — sacre! — the thing was 
done; our honor was involved; he had engaged to fight 
these men, and engaged for us to let them go in peace 
afterward; there was no more to be said, unless we had 


204 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


looked like cowards, or traitors, or both. There was a 
wide, level plateau in front of our camp, and the hills were 
at our backs — a fine field for the duello ; and, true to time, 
the Arabs filed on to the plain, and fronted us in a long 
line, with their standards, and their crescents, aud their 
cymbals and reed-pipes, and kettle-drums, all glittering and 
sounding. Sac d papier! there was a show, and we could 
not fight one of them 1 We were drawn up in line — Horse, 
Foot, and Artillery — Rire-pour-tout all alone, some way in 
advance, mounted of course. The General and the Sheik 
had a conference ; then the play began. There were six 
Arabs picked out — the flower of the army — all white and 
scarlet, and in their handsomest bravery, as if they came to 
an aouda. They were fine men — diable! — they were fine 
men. Now the duel was to be with swords ; these had 
been selected ; and each Arab was to come against Rire- 
pour-tout singly, in succession. Our drums rolled the pas 
de charge , and their cymbals clashed ; they shouted * Fan- 
tasia, V and the first Arab rode at him. Rire-pour-tout 
sat like a rock, and lunge went his steel through the Be- 
douin’s lung, before you could cry hola I — a death-stroke, 
of course ; Rire-pour-tout always killed : that was his per- 
fect science. Another and another and another came, just 
as fast as the blood flowed. You know what the Arabs are 
— vous autres ? how they wheel and swerve and fight flying, 
and pick up their saber from the ground, while their horse 
is galloping ventre d terre , and pierce you here and pierce 
you there, and circle round you like so many hawks ? You 
know how they fought Rire-pour-tout then, one after an- 
other, more like devils than men. Mort de Dieu ! it was a 
magnificent sight ! He was gashed here and gashed there ; 
but they could never unseat him, try how they would ; and 
one after another he caught them sooner or later, and sent 
them reeling out of their saddles, till there was a great red 
lake of blood all round him, and five of them lay dead or 
dying down in the sand. He had mounted afresh twice, 
three horses had been killed underneath him, and his jacket 
all hung in strips where the' steel had slashed it. It was 
grand to see, and did one’s heart good ; but — ventre bleu! 
— how one longed to go in too. 

‘‘There was only one left now — a young Arab, tho 


IN THE CAFfi OP TnE CHASSEURS. 


205 


Sheik’s son, and down he came like the wind. Ho thought 
with the shock to unhorse Rire-pour-tout, and finish him 
then at his leisure. You could hear the crash as they met 
like two huge cymbals smashing together. Their chargers 
bit and tore at each other’s manes ; they were twined in 
together there as if they were but one man and one beast; 
they shook and they swayed and they rocked ; the sabers 
played about their heads so quick that it was like lightning 
as they flashed and twirled in the sun ; the hoofs trampled 
up the sand till a yellow cloud hid their struggle, and out 
of it all you could see was the head of a horse tossing up 
and spouting with foam, or a sword-blade lifted to strike. 
Then the tawny cloud settled down a little, the sand mist 
cleared away, the Arab’s saddle was empty, but Rire-pour- 
tout sat like a rock. The old Chief bowed his head. ‘It 
is over ! Allah is great 1’ And he knew his son lay there 
dead. Then we broke from the ranks, and we rushed to 
the place where the chargers and men were piled like so 
many slaughtered sheep. Rire-pour-tout laughed such a 
gay ringing laugh as the desert never had heard. ‘ Vive 
la France!’ he cried. ‘And now bring me my toss of 
brandy.’ Then down headlong out of his stirrups he 
reeled and fell under his horse; and when we lifted him 
up there were two broken sword-oiades buried in him, Ifnd 
the blood was pouring fast as water out of thirty wounds 
and more. That was how Rire-pour-tout died, piou-piou, 
laughing to the last. Sacrebleu 1 it was a splendid end ; 
I wish I were sure of the like.” 

And Claude de Chanrellon drank down his third beaker, 
for overmuch speech made him thirsty. 

The men around him emptied their glasses in honor of 
the dead hero. 

“ Rire-pour-tout was a croc-mitaine ,” they said, sol- 
emnly, with almost a sigh, so tendering by their words the 
highest funeral oration. 

“ You have much of such sharp service here, I suppose ?” 
asked a voice in very pure French. The speaker was lean- 
ing against the open door of the cafe ; a tall, lightly built 
man, dressed in a velvet shooting tunic, much the worse 
for wind and weather, a loose shirt, and jack-boots splashed 
and worn out. 


18 


206 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“When we are afc it, monsieur,” returned the Chasseur. 
“I only wish we had more.” 

“Of course. Are you in need of recruits?” 

“ They all want to come to us and to the Zouaves,” 
smiled Chanrellon, surveying the figure of the one who ad- 
dressed him with a keen sense of its symmetry and its sinew. 
“ Still* a good sword brings its welcome. Do you ask 
seriously, monsieur ?” 

The bearded Arabs smoking their long pipes, the little 
piou-piou drowning his mortification in some cura£oa, the 
idlers reading the AIcbah or the Presse, the Chasseurs 
lounging over their drink, the ecarte players lost in their 
game, all looked up at the new-comer. They thought he 
looked a likely wearer of the dead honors of Rire-pour- 
tout. 

He did not answer the questions literally, but came over 
from the doorway and seated himself at the little marble 
table opposite Claude, leaning his elbows on it. 

“ I have a doubt,” he said. “ I am more inclined to 
your foes.” 

“ Dieu de dieu I” ejaculated Chanrellon, pulling at his 
tawny moustaches. “A bold thing to say before five Chas- 
seurs.” 

He smiled a little contemptuously, a little amusedly. 

“ I am not a croc-mitaine* perhaps ; but I say what I 
think, with little heed of my auditors usually.” 

Chanrellon bent his bright brown eyes curiously on him. 
“ He is a croc-mitaine” he thought. “He is not to be 
lost.” 

“ I prefer your foes,” went on the other, quite quietly, 
quite listlessly, as though the glittering, gaslit cafe were 
not full of French soldiers. “ In the first place, they are 
on the losing side ; in the second, they are the lords of the 
soil; in the third, they live as free as air ; and in the fourth, 
they have undoubtedly the right of the quarrel !” 

“ Monsieur 1” cried the Chasseurs, laying their hands on 
their swords, fiery as lions. He looked indolently and 
wearily up from under the long lashes of his lids, and went 
on, as though they had not spoken. 

“ I will fight you all, if you like, as that worthy of yours, 


* Fire-eater. 


IN THE CAF& OF THE CHASSEURS. 


207 


Riro-pour tout, did, but I don’t think it’s worth while,” he 
said, carelessly, where he leaned over the marble table 
‘Brawling’s bad style; we don’t do it. I was saying, I 
like your foes best ; mere matter of taste ; no need to quar- 
rel over it — that I see. I shall go into their service or into 
yours, monsieur — will you play a game of dice to decide I” 

“ Decide ? — but how?” 

“Why — this way,” said the other, with the weary list- 
lessness of one who cares not two straws how things turn. 
“ If I win I go to the Arabs ; if you win I come to your 
ranks.” 

“ Mort de Dieu ! it is a droll gambling,” murmured 
Chanrellon. “ But — if you do win, do you think we shall 
let you go off to our enemies ? Pas si bate, monsieur /”* 

“Yes, you will,” said the other quietly. “Men who 
knew what honor meant enough to redeem Rire-pour-tout’s 
pledge of safety to the Bedouins, will not take advantage 
of an openly confessed and unarmed adversary.” 

A murmur of ratification ran through his listeners. 

Chanrellon swore a mighty oath. 

“Pardieu, No. You are right. If you want to go, 
you shall go. Hola there ! bring the dice. Champagne, 
monsieur ? Yermout ? cognac ?” 

“Nothing, I thank you.” 

He leant back with an apathetic indolence and indiffer- 
ence, oddly at contrast with the injudicious daring of his 
war-provoking words, and the rough campaigning that he 
sought; the assembled Chasseurs eyed him curiously; they 
liked his manner and they resented his first speeches; they 
noted every particular about him — his delicate white hands, 
his w T eather-worn and travel-stained dress, his fair aristo- 
cratic features, his sweeping abundant beard, his careless, 
cool, tired, reckless way ; and they were uncertain what to 
make of him. 

The dice were brought. 

“ What stakes, monsieur ?” asked Chanrellon. 

“Ten napoleons a side — and — the Arabs.” 

He set ten napoleons down on the table ; they were the 
only coins he had in the world ; it was very characteristic 
that he risked them. 


* Not such fools, monsieur. 


203 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


They threw the main — two sixes. 

“You see,” he murmured, with a half smile, “the dice 
know it is a drawn duel between you and the Arabs.” 

“C’est un drole, c’est un brave 1”* muttered Chanrellon ; 
and they threw again. 

The Chasseur cast a five ; his was a five again. 

“ The dice cannot make up their minds,” said the other 
listlessly, “they know you are Might and the Arabs are 
Right.” 

The Frenchmen laughed ; they could take a jest good- 
humoredly, and alone amid so many of them he was made 
sacred at once by the very length of odds against him. 

They rattled the boxes and threw again — Chanrellon’s 
was three ; his two. 

“ Ah 1” he murmured. “ Right kicks . the beam and 
loses ; it always does, poor devil 1” 

The Chasseur leaned across the table, with his brown, 
fearless, sunny eyes full of pleasure. 

“ Monsieur I never lament such good fortune for France, 
you belong to us now; let me claim you 1” 

He bowed more gravely than he had borne himself 
hitherto. 

“You do me much honor ; fortune has willed it so. One 
word only in stipulation.” 

Chanrellon assented courteously. 

“As many as you choose.” 

“ I have a companion who must be brigaded with me, 
and I must go on active service at once.” 

“ With infinite pleasure. That doubtless can be arranged. 
You shall present yourself to-morrow morning ; and for to- 
night, this is not the season here yet, and we are trisie & 
faire fremir;\ still I can show you a little fun, though it 
is not Paris !” 

But he rose and bowed again. 

“ I thank you, not to-night. You shall see me at your 
barracks with the morning.” 

“Ah, ah 1 monsieur I” cried the Chasseur eagerly, and a 
little annoyed. “What warrant have we that you will 
not dispute the decree of the dice, and go off to your 
favorites, the Arabs ?” 


* An odd fellow! A brave fellow! 


f Frightfully dull. 


“DE PROFUNDIS” BEFORE “ PLUNGING. ” 209 

Ho turned back and looked full in Chanrellon’s face, hia 
own eyes a little surprised, and infinitely weary. 

“ What warrant ? My promise.” 

Then, without another syllable, he lounged slowly out 
through the soldiers and the idlers, and disappeared in the 
confused din and chiar’oscuro of the gas-lit street without, 
through the press of troopers, grisettes, merchants, beg- 
gars, sweetmeat-sellers, lemonade-sellers, cura^a-sellers, 
gaunt Bedouins, negro boys, shrieking muleteers, laughing 
lorettes, and glittering staff-officers. 

“That is done!” he murmured to his own thoughts. 
“Now for life under another flag!” 

Claude de Chanrellon sat mute and amazed awhile, 
gazing at the open door; then he drank a fourth beaker 
of champagne and flung the emptied glass down with a 
mighty crash. 

“ Ventre-bleu ! whoever he is, that man will eat fire, 
bons gargons /” 


CHAPTER XIV. 

“DE PROFUNDIS” BEFORE “ PLUNGING.” 

Three months later, it was guest-night in the mess-room 
of a certain famous light cavalry regiment, who bear the 
reputation of being the fastest corps in the English ser- 
vice. Of a truth, they do “ plunge ” a little too wildly ; 
and stories are told of bets over ecarte in their ante-room 
that have been prompt extinction forever and aye to the 
losers, for they rarely play money down, their stakes are 
too high, and moderate fortunes may go in a night with 
the other convenient but fatal system. But, this one in- 
discretion apart, they are a model corps for blood, for dash, 
for perfect social accord, for the finest horseflesh in the 
kingdom, and the best president at # a mess-table that ever 
drilled the cook to matchlessness, and made the iced dry, 
and the old burgundies, the admired of all new-comers. 

Just now they had pleasant quarters enough in York, 
0 18 * 


210 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


had a couple of hundred hunters, all in all, in their stalls, 
were showing the Ridings that they could “go like birds,” 
and were using up their second horses with every day out, 
in the first of the season. A cracker over the best of the 
ground with the York and Ainstv, that had given two first- 
rate things quick as lightning, and both closed with a kill, 
had filled the day; and they were dining with a fair quan- 
tity of county guests, and all the splendor of plate, and 
ceremony, and magnificent hospitalities which characterize 
those beaux sabreurs wheresoever they go. At one part 
of the table a discussion was going on as the claret passed 
around ; wines were perfection at the mess, but they drank 
singularly little; it was not their “form” ever to indulge 
in that way; and the Chief, as dashing a sabreur as ever 
crossed a saddle, though lenient to looseness in all other 
matters, and very young for his command, would have 
been down like steel on “ the boys,” had any of them taken 
to the pastime of overmuch drinking in any shape. 

“ I can’t get the rights of the story,” said one of the 
guests, a hunting baronet, and M. F. H. “ It’s something 
very dark, isn’t it ?” 

“Very dark,” assented a tall handsome man, with an 
habitual air of the most utterly exhausted apathy ever at- 
tained by the human features, but who, nevertheless, had 
been christened, by the fiercest of the warrior nations of 
the Punjaub, as the Shumsheer-i-Shaitan, or Sword of the 
Evil One, so terrible had the circling sweep of one back 
stroke of his, when he was quite a boy, become to them. 

“ Guards cut up fearfully rough,” murmured one near 
him, known as “the Dauphin,” “such a low sort of thing, 
you know, that’s the worst of it. Seraph’s name, too.” 

“ Poor old Seraph 1 he’s fairly bowled over about it,” 
added a third. “ Feels it awfully — by Jove he does ! It’s 
my belief he paid those Jew fellows the whole sum to get 
the pursuit slackened.” 

“ So Thelusson says. Thelusson says Jews have made 
a cracker by it. I dare say ! Jews always do,” muttered 
a fourth. “ First Life would have given Beauty a million 
sooner than have him do it. Horrible thing for the House- 
hold.” 

“But is he dead ?” pursued their guest. 


“de profundis” before “PLUNGING.” 211 

“ Beauty ? Yes ; smashed in that express, you know.” 

“But there was no evidence ?” 

“ 1 don’t know what you call evidence,” murmured “the 
Dauphin.” “Horses are sent to England from Paris; 
clearly shows he went to Paris. Marseilles train smashes ; 
twenty people ground into indistinguishable amalgamation ; 
two of the amalgamated jammed head foremost in a car- 
riage alone ; only traps in carriage with them, Beauty’s 
traps, with name clear on the brass outside, and crest clear 
on silver things inside ; two men ground to atoms, but 
traps safe ; two men, of course Beauty and servant ; man 
was a plucky fellow, sure to stay with him.” 

And having given the desired evidence in lazy little in- 
tervals of speech, he took some Rhenish. 

“Well — yes; nothing could be more conclusive, cer- 
tainly,” assented the Baronet, resignedly convinced. “It 
was the best thing that could happen under the unfortu- 
nate circumstances, so Lord Royallieu thinks, I suppose, 
lie allowed no one to wear mourning, and had his unhappy 
son’s portrait taken down and burnt.” 

“ How melodramatic !” reflected Leo Charteris. “Now 
what the deuce can it hurt a dead man to have his portrait 
made into a bonfire ? Old lord always did hate Beauty, 
though. Rock does all the mourning; he’s cut up no 
end ; never saw a fellow so knocked out of time. Yowed 
at first he’d sell out, and go into the Austrian service ; 
swore he couldn’t stay in the Household, but would get a 
command of some Heavies, and be changed to India.” 

“ Duke didn’t like that — didn’t want him shot ; nobody 
else, you see, for the title. By George I I wish you’d seen 
Rock the other day on the Heath ; little Pulteney came up 
to him.” * 

“ What Pulteney ? — Jimmy, or the Earl ?” 

“Oh, the Earl. Jimmy w'ould have known better. 
These new men never know anything. 1 You purchased 
that famous steeple-chaser of his from Mr. Cecil’s credit- 
ors, didn’t you ?’ asks Pulteney. Rock just looks him over. 
Such a look, by George ! ‘ I received Forest King as my 

d^ad friend’s last gift.’ Pulteney never takes the hint — 
not he. On he blunders : ‘ Because, if you were inclined 
to part with him, I want a good new hunting strain, with 


212 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


plenty of fencing power, and I’d take him for the stud at 
any figure you liked.’ I thought the Seraph would have 
knocked him down — I did, upon my honor 1 He was red 
as this wine in a second with rage, and then as white as a 
woman. ‘You are quite right,’ he says quietly, and I 
swear each word cut like a bullet, ‘you do want a new 
strain with something like breeding in it, but — I hardly 
think you’ll get it for the three next generations. You 
must learn to know what it means first. , Then away he 
lounges, leaving Pulteney plante-ld. By Jove! I don’t 
think the Cotton-Earl will forget this Cambridgeshire in 
a hurry, or try horse-dealing on the Seraph again.” 

Laughter loud and long greeted the story. 

“ Poor Beauty!” said the Dauphin, “ he’d have enjoyed 
that. He always put down Pulteney himself. I remember 
his telling me he was on duty at Windsor once when 
Pulteney was staying there. Pulteney’s always horribly 
funked at Court ; frightened out of his life when he dines 
with any royalties; makes an awful figure too in a public 
ceremony; can’t walk backward for any money, and at his 
first levee tumbled down right in the Queen’s face. Now 
at the Castle one night he just happened to come down a 
corridor as Beauty was smoking. Beauty made believe to 
take him for a servant, took out a sovereign, and tossed it 
to him. ‘ Here, keep a still tongue about my cigar, my 
good fellow 1’ Pulteney turned hot and cold, and stam- 
mered out God knows what, about his mighty dignity 
being mistaken for a valet. Bertie just laughed a little, 
ever so softly. ‘ Beg your pardon — thought you were one 
of the people ; wouldn’t have done it for worlds ; I know 
you’re never at ease with a sovereign I’ Now Pulteney 
wasn’t likely to forget that. If he wanted the King, I’ll 
lay any money it was to give him to some wretched mount 
who’d break his back over a fence in a selling race.” 

“ Well, he won’t have him ; Seraph don’t intend to have 
the horse ever ridden or hunted at all.” 

“ Nonsense 1” 

“ By Jove, he means it ! nobody’s to cross the King’s 
back; he wants weight carriers himself, you know, and 
precious strong ones too. The King’s put in the stud at 
Lyonnesse. Poor Bertie ! nobody ever managed a close 


“de profundis” before “plunging.” 213 

finish as ho did at the Grand National — last but two — 
don’t you remember V ’ 

“ Yes ; waited so beautifully on Fly-by-Night, and shot 
by him like lightning just before the run-in. Pity he went 
to the bad 1” 

“Ah ! what a hand he played at ecarte; the very best 
of the French science. ” 

“But reckless at whist; a wild game there — uncom- 
monly wild. Drove Cis Delareux half mad one night at 
Royallieu with the way he threw his trumps out. Old Cis 
dashed his cards down at last, and looked him full in the 
face. ‘ Beauty, do you know, or do you not know, that a 
whist-table is not to be taken as you take timber in a hunt- 
ing-field, on the principle of clear it or smash it ?’ — ‘ Faith !’ 
said Bertie, * clear it or smash it, is a very good rule for 
anything, but a trifle too energetic for me.’ ” 

“The deuce, he’s had enough of ‘smashing’ at last I 
I wish he hadn’t come to grief in that style; it’s a shock- 
ing bore for the Guards, — such an ugly story.” 

“ It was uncommonly like him to get killed just when he 
did, — best possible taste.” 

“ Only thing he could do.” 

“ Better taste would have been to do it earlier. I always 
wondered he stopped for the row.” 

“ Oh, never thought it would turn up; trusted to a fluke.” 

He whom the Punjaub knew as the Sword of the Evil 
One, but who held in polite society the title of Lord Ker- 
genven, drank some hock slowly, and murmured as his solo 
quota to the conversation very lazily and languidly. 

“ Bet you he isn’t dead at all.” 

“ The deuce you do ? And why ?” chorused the table ; 
“ when a fellow’s body’s found with all his traps round 
him 1” 

“ I don’t believe he’s dead,” murmured Kergenven with 
closed slumberous eyes. 

“ But why ? Have you heard anything ?” 

“ Not a word.” 

“Why do you say he’s alive then ?” 

My lord lifted his brows ever so little. 

“I think so, that’s all.” 

“ But you must have a reason, Ker ?” 


214 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Badgered into speech, Kergenven drank a little more 
hock, and dropped out slowly in the mellowest voice in the 
world the following: 

“It don’t follow one has reasons for anything; pray 
don’t get logical. Two years ago I was out in a chasse au 
sanglier, central France; perhaps you don’t know their 
work ? It’s uncommonly queer. Break up the Alps into 
little bits, scatter ’em pell-mell over a great forest, and then 
set a killing pack to hunt through and through it. De- 
lightful chance for coming to grief ; even odds that if you • 
don’t pitch down a ravine, you’ll get blinded for life by a 
branch ; that if you don’t get flattened under a boulder, 
you’ll be shot by a twig catching your rifle-trigger. Un- 
commonly good sport.” 

Exhausted with so lengthened an exposition of the 
charms of the v&nerie and the hallali, he stopped, and 
dropped a walnut into some Regency sherry. 

“ Hang it, Ker 1” cried the Dauphin. “ What’s that to 
do with Beauty ?” 

My lord let fall a sleepy glance of surprise and of re- 
buke from under his black lashes, that said mutely, “ Do I, 
who hate talking, ever talk wide of any point?” 

“Why this ?” he murmured. “He was with us down at 
Yeilleroc, Louis d’Auvrai’s place, you know; and we were 
out after an old boar — not too old to race ; but still tough 
enough to be likely to turn and trust to his tusks if the 
pace got very hot, and he was hard pressed at the finish. 
We hadn’t found, till rather late, the limeurs were rather 
new to the work, and the November day was shqrt, of 
course ; the pack got on the slot of a roebuck tod, and 
were off the boar’s scent a little while, running wild. Al- 
together we got scattered, and in the forest it grew almost 
as dark as pitch : you followed just as you could, and could 
only guide yourself by your ear when the hounds gave cry, 
or the horns sounded. On you blundered, hit or miss, 
headlong down the rocks and through the branches; horses 
warmed wonderfully to the business, scrambled like cats, 
slid down like otters, kept their footing where nobody’d 
have thought anything but a goat could stand. Our hunt- 
ing bloods knock up over a cramped country like Mon- 
mouthshire ; they wouldn’t live an hour in a French forest : 


*‘DE PROFUNDIS” BEFORE “ PLUNGING. ” 215 

you see we just look for pace and strength in the shoulders, 
we don’t much want anything else — except good jumping 
power. What a lot of fellows — even in the crack packs — 
will always funk water ! Horses will fly , but they can’t 
swim. Now to my fancy, a clever beast ought to take even 
a swelling bit of water like a duck. How poor Standard 
breasted rivers till that fool staked him 1” 

He dropped more walnuts into his wine, wistfully recall- 
ing a mighty hero of Leicestershire fame, that had given 
him many a magnificent day out, and had been the idol of 
his stables, till in his twelfth year the noble old sorrel had 
been killed by a groom’s recklessness; recklessness that 
met with such chastisement, as told how and why the hill- 
tribes’ soubriquet had been given to the hand that would 
lie so long in indolent rest, to strike with such fearful force 
when once raised. 

“Well,” he went on once more. “We were all of us 
scattered ; scarcely two kept together anywhere ; where 
the pack was, where the boar was, where the huntsmen 
were, nobody knew. Now and then I heard the hounds 
giving tongue at the distance, and I rode after that to the 
best of my science, and uncommonly bad was the best. 
That forest work perplexes one after the grass-country. 
You can’t view the beauties two minutes together; and as 
for sinning by overriding ’em, you’re very safe not to do 
thatl At last I heard a crashing sound loud and furious; 
I thought they had got him to bay at last. There was a 
great oak thicket as hard as iron, and as close as a net, 
between me and the place ; the boughs were all twisted 
together, God knows how, and grew so low down, that the 
naked branches had to be broken through at every step by 
the horse’s fore hoofs, before he could force a step. We did 
force it somehow at last, and came into a green open space, 
where there were fewer trees, and the moon was shining 
in ; there, without a hound near, true enough was the boar 
rolling on the ground, and somebody rolling under him, 
they were locked in so close they looked just like one huge 
beast, pitching here and there, as you’ve seen the rhinos 
wallow in Indian jheels. Of course, I leveled my rifle, 
but I waited to get a clear aim ; for which was man and 
which was boar, the deuce a bit could I tell ; just as I had 


216 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


pointed, Beauty’s voico called out to me : 1 Keep your fire, 
Kerl I want to have him myself.’ It was he that was 
under the brute. Just as he spoke they rolled toward me, 
the boar foaming and spouting blood, and plunging his 
tusks into Cecil; he got his right arm out from under the 
beast, and crushed under there as he was, drew it free with 
the knife well gripped; then down he dashed it three times 
into the veteran’s hide, just beneath the ribs; it was the 
coup de grace , the boar lay dead, and Beauty lay half dead 
too, the blood rushing out of him where the tusks had 
dived. Two minutes, though, and a draught of my brandy 
brought him all round ; and the first words he spoke were, 
‘ Thanks, Ker, you did as you would be done by — a shot 
would have spoilt it all.’ The brute had crossed his path 
far away from the pack, and he had flung himself out of 
saddle and had a neck-and-neck struggle. And that night 
we played baccarat by his bedside to amuse him ; and ho 
played just as well as ever. Now this is why I don’t think 
he’s dead; a fellow who served a wild boar like that, won’t 
have let a train knock him over. And I don’t believe he 
forged that stiff, though all the evidence says so ; Beauty 
hadn’t a touch of the blackguard in him.” 

With which declaration of his views, Kergenven lapsed 
into immutable silence and slumberous apathy, from whose 
shelter nothing could tempt him afresh ; and the Colonel, 
with all the rest, lounged into the ante-room, where the 
tables were set, and began “ plunging ” in earnest at sums 
that might sound fabulous, were they written here. The 
players staked heavily ; but it was the galerie who watched 
around, making their bets, and backing their favorites, 
that lost on the whole the most. 

“ Horse Guards have heard of the plunging ; think we’re 
going too fast,” murmured the Chief to Kergenven, his 
Major, who lifted his brows, and murmured back with the 
demureness of a maiden : 

“ Tell ’em it’s our only vice ; we’re models of propriety.” 

Which possibly would not have been received with the 
belief desirable by the skeptics of Pall Mall. 

So the De Profundis was said over Bertie Cecil ; and 
“ Beauty of the Brigades ” ceased to be named in the ser- 
vice, and soon ceased to be even remembered. In the 


217 


“l’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 

steeple-chase of life there is no time to look back at the 
failures, who have broken down over a “ double and drop,” 
and fallen out of the pace. 


CHAPTER XT. 

* L'AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 

“ Did I not say he would eat fire ?” 

“Pardieu ! c’est un brave” 

“Rides like an Arab.” 

“Smokes like a Zouave.” 

“ Cuts off a head with that back circular sweep, — ah — 
h — h I magnificent !” 

“ And dances like an Aristocrat ; not like a tipsy 
Spahis I” 

The last crown to the chorus of applause, and insult to 
the circle of applauders, was launched with all the piquance 
of inimitable canteen-slang and camp-assurance, from a 
speaker who had perched astride on a broken fragment of 
wall, with her barrel of wine set up on end on the stones 
in front of her, and her six soldiers, her gros bebees* as 
6he was given maternally to calling them, lounging at their 
ease on the arid dusty turf below. She was very pretty, 
audaciously pretty, though her skin was burned to a bright 
sunny brown, and her hair was cut as short as a boy’s, and 
her face had not one regular feature in it. But then — reg- 
ularity! who wanted it, who would have thought the most 
pure classic type a change for the better, with those dark 
dancing, challenging eyes, with that arch, brilliant, kitten- 
like face, so sunny, so mignon, and those scarlet lips like a 
bud of camellia that were never so handsome as when a 
cigarette was between them, or, sooth to say, not seldom a 
brule gueule f itself ? 


* Big babies. 


19 


f Short pipe. 


218 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


She was pretty, she was insolent, she was intolerably co- 
quettish, she was mischievous as a marmoset, she would 
swear if need be like a Zouave, she could fire galloping, 
she could toss off her brandy or her vermout like a trooper, 
she would on occasion clinch her little brown hand and 
deal a blow that the recipient would not covet twice, she 
was an enfant de Paris and had all its wickedness at her 
fingers, she would sing you guinguette songs till you were 
suffocated with laughter, and she would dance the cancan 
at the Salle de Mars, with the biggest giant of a Cuiras- 
sier there. And yet with all that, she was not wholly un- 
sexed, with all that she had the delicious fragrance of 
youth, and had not left a certain feminine grace behind her, 
though she wore a vivandiere’s uniform, and had been born 
in a barrack, and meant to die in a battle ; it was the blend- 
ing of the two that made her piquante, made her a notori- 
ety in her own way; known at pleasure, and equally, in the 
Army of Africa as “ Cigarette,” and “L’Amie du Dra- 
peau.” 

“ Not like a tipsy Spahis 1” it was a cruel cut to her gros 
bebees , mostly Spahis, lying there at her feet, or rather at 
the foot of the wall, singing their praises — with magna- 
nimity beyond praise — of a certain Chasseur d’Afrique. 

“Ho, Cigarette 1” growled a little Zouave, known as 
Tata Leroux. “ That is the way thou forsakest thy friends 
for the first fresh face.” 

“Well, it is not a face like a tobacco-stopper, as thine 
is, Tata 1” responded Cigarette with a puff of her name- 
sake ; the repartee of the camp is apt to be rough. “ He 
is Bel-d-faire-peur , as you nickname him.” 

“A woman’s face 1” growled the injured Tata; whose 
own countenance was of the color and well-nigh of the flat- 
ness of one of the red bricks of the wall. 

“ Ouf !” said the Friend of the Flag with more expres- 
sion in that single ejaculation than could be put in a 
volume. “ He does woman’s deeds, does he ? He has 
woman’s hands, but they can fight, I fancy? Six Arabs to 
his own sword the other day in that skirmish I Superb 1” 

“ Sapristi I And what did he feay, this droll, when he 
looked at them lying there ? Just shrugged his shoulders 
and rode away. ‘ I’d better have killed myself, less mis* 


219 


“l’amie dj drapeau,” 

chief on the whole !’ Now who is to make anything of 
each a man as that ?” 

“Ah ! he did not stop to cut their gold buttons off, and 
steal their cangiars, as thou wouldst have done, Tata ? Well ! 
he has not learnt la guerre”* laughed Cigarette. “It 
was a waste; he should have brought me their sashes at 
least. By-the-way — when did he join?” 

“ Ten — twelve — years ago, or thereabouts.” 

“ He should have learnt to strip Arabs by this time, 
then,” said the Amie du Drapeau, turning the tap of her 
barrel to replenish the wine-cup ; “ and to steal from them 
too, living or dead. Thou must take him in hand, Tata !” 

Tata laughed, considering that he had received a com- 
pliment. 

“ Diable ! I did a neat thing yesterday. Out on the 
hills, there, was a shepherd ; he’d got two live geese swing- 
ing by their feet. They were screeching — screeching — 
screeching 1 — and they looked so nice and so plump, that I 
could smell them, as if they were stewing in a casserole, 
till I began to get as hungry as a gamin. A lunge would 
just have cut the question at once ; but the orders have got 
so strict potting about the natives, I thought I wouldn’t 
have any violence, if the thing would go nice and smoothly. 
So I just walked behind him, and tripped him up before he 
knew where he was ; — it was a picture ! He was down 
with his face in the sand before you could sing Tra- la-la 1 
Then I just sat upon him; but gently — very gently: and 
what with the sand and the heat, and the surprise, and, in 
truth, perhaps, a little too, my own weight, he was half 
suffocated. He had never seen me ; he did not know what 
it was that was sitting on him; and I sent my voice out 
with a roar — ‘ I am a demon, and the fiend hath bidden me 
take him thy soul to-night I’ Ah I how he began to trem- 
ble, and to kick, and to quiver. He thought it was the 
devil a-top of him ; and he began to moan as well as the 
sand would let him, that he was a poor man, and an inno- 
cent, and the geese were the only things ho ever stole in 
all his life. Then I went through a little pantomime with 
him, and I was very terrible in my threats, and he was 


* The art of war. 


220 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


choking and choking with the sand, though he never let go 
of the geese. At last, I relented a little, and told him I 
would spare him that once, if he gave up the stolen goods, 
and never lifted his head for an hour. Sapristi I how glad 
he was of the terms 1 I dare say my weight was unpleas- 
ant ; so the geese made us a divine stew that night, and 
the last thing. I saw of my man was his lying flat as I left 
him, with his face still down in the sand-hole.” 

Cigarette nodded and laughed. 

“ Pretty fair, Tata ; but I have heard better. Bah ! a 
grand thing certainly, to fright a peasant, and scamper off 
with a goose 1” 

“ Sacre bleu !” grumbled Tata, who was himself of 
opinion that his exploit had been worthy of the feats of 
Harlequin; “thy heart is all gone to the Englishman.” 

Cigarette laughed saucily and heartily, tickled at the 
joke. Sentiment has an exquisitely ludicrous side when 
one is a vivandiere aux yeux noirs * perched astride on a 
wall, and dispensing brandy-dashed wine to half a dozen 
sun-baked Spahis. 

“Vivandiere du rdgiment, 

C’est Catin qu’on me nomme; 

Je vends, je donne, je bois gaiment, 

Mon vin et mon rogomme; 

J’ai le pied leste ct l’ceil matin, 

Tintin, tintin, tintin, r’lin tintin, 

Soldats, voila Catin!” 

she sang with the richest, freshest, mellowest voice that 
ever chanted the deathless refrains of the French Lucilius. 

“ My heart is a reveil matin, Tata; it wakes fresh every 
day. An Englishman, perdie ! Why dost thou think him 
that ?” 

“ Because he is a giant,” said Tata. 

Cigarette snapped her fingers : 

“ I have danced with grenadiers and cuirassiers quite as 
tall, and twice as heavy. ApresV' 

“Because he bathes — splash 1 like any water-dog.” 

“Because he is silent.” 


• * A black-eyed wine-seller. 


221 


“L’AMIE DU DRAPE AU.” 

“Because he rises in his stirrups.” 

“Because he likes the sea.” 

“Because he knows le boxe.”* 

“ Because he is so quiet, and blazes like the devil undef* 
neath.” 

Under which mass of overwhelming proofs of nationality 
the Amie du Drapeau gave in. 

“Yes, like enough. Besides, the other one is English. 
Lour-i-loo, of the Chasses-marais ,f tells me that the other 
one waits on him like a slave when he can — cleans his har- 
ness, litters his horse, saves him all the hard work, when 
he can do it without being found out. Where did they 
come from ?” 

“They will never tell.” 

Cigarette tossed her nonchalant head, with a pout of her 
cherry lips, and a slang oath, light as a bird, wicked as a 
rigolbochade. 

“ Paf ! — they will tell it to me !” 

“ Chut ! Thou mayest make a lion tame, a vulture leave 
blood, a drum beat its own rataplan, a dead man fire a 
clarinelte\ d six pieds; but thou wilt never make an Eng- 
lishman speak when he is bent to be silent.” 

Cigarette launched a choice missile of barrack slang at 
an array of metaphors, which their propounder thought 
stupendous in their brilliancy. 

“Becasse! When you stole your geese, you did but 
take your brethren home ! Englishmen are but men. Put 
the wine in their head, make them whirl in a vailtz, promise 
them a kiss, and one turns such brains as they have inside 
out, as a piou-piou§ turns a dead soldier’s wallet. When 
a woman is handsome, she is never denied. He shall tell 
me where he comes from. I doubt that it is from England ; 
see here — why not ?” and she checked the Noes off on her 
lithe brown fingers: “first, he never says God-damn; 
second, he don’t eat his meat raw ; third, he speaks very 
soft ; fourth, he waltzes so light, so light ! fifth, he never 
grumbles in his throat like an angry bear ; sixth, there is no 
fog in him. How can he be English with all that ?” 


* Boxing. 

J A musket. 


19 * 


Chasseurs d’Afrique. 
Infantry soldier. 


222 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ There are English, and English,” said the philosophic 
Tata, who piqued himself on being serenely cosmopolitan. 

Cigarette blew a contemptuous puff of smoke. 

“ There was never one yet that did not growl ! Pauvres 
diables/ if they don’t use their tusks, they sit and sulk ! — . 
an Englishman is always boxing or grumbling; — the two 
make up his life.” 

Which view of Anglo-rabies she had derived from a 
profound study of various vaudevilles, in which the tradi- 
tional God-damn was pre-eminent in his usual hues; and 
having delivered it, she sprang down from her wall, strapped 
on her little barillet* nodded to her gros bdbees, where 
they lounged full length in the shadow of the stone wall, 
and left them to resume their game at Boc, while she 
started on her way, as swift and as light as a chamois, 
singing, with gay ringing emphasis, that echoed all down 
the hot and silent air, the second verse of Beranger : 

“ Je fas cbbre a tou3 nosli^ros; 

Helas! combien j’en pleure, 

Ainsi soldats et g6n6raux 
Me comblaient a tout heure, 

D’amour de gloire et de butin, 

Tintin, tintin, tintin, r’lin tintin, 

D’amour de gloire et de butin, 

» Soldats, viola Catm!” 

The song was not altogether her song, however, for she 
had wept for none — wept not at all : she had never shed 
tears in her life. A dashing, dauntless, vivacious life, just 
in its youth, loving plunder, and mischief, and mirth ; caring 
for nothing ; and always ready with a laugh, a song, a slang 
repartee, or a shot from the dainty pistols thrust in her 
sash, that a general of division had given her, whichever 
best suited the moment. 

Her mother a camp-follower, her father nobody knew 
who, a spoilt child of the Army from her birth, with a 
heart as bronzed as her cheek, and hei^ respect for the laws 
of meum and tuum nil, yet with odd stray, nature-sown 
instincts here and there, of a devil-may-care nobility, and 
of a wild grace that nothing could kill — Cigarette was the 


* Little barrel. 


223 


"L’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 

pet of the Army of Africa, and was as lawless as most of 
her patrons. 

She would eat a succulent duck, thinking it all the spicier 
because it had been a soldier’s “ loot ;” she would wear the 
gold plunder off dead Arabs’ dress, and never have a pang 
of conscience with it; she would dance all night long, 
when she had a chance, like a little Bacchante; she would 
shoot a man, if need be, with all the nonchalance in the 
world. She had had a thousand lovers, from handsome 
marquesses of the Guides to tawny black-browed scoun- 
drels in the Zouaves, and she had never loved anything, 
except the roll of the pas de charge, and the sight of her 
own arch deGant face, with its scarlet lips and its short 
jetty hair, when she saw it by chance in some burnished 
cuirass, that served her for a mirror. She was more like a 
handsome saucy boy than anything else under the sun, and 
yet there was that in the pretty, impudent, little Friend of 
the Flag that was feminine with it all — generous and 
graceful amid all her boldness, and her license, her revel- 
ries, and the unsettled life she led in the barracks and the 
camps, under the shadow of the eagles. 

Away she went, now singing — 

“ Mais je ris en sage, 

Bon! 

La farira dondaine, 

Gai! , 

La farira dond6e!” 

down the crooked windings and over the ruined gardens 
of the old Moorish quarter of the Cashbah, the hilts of 
the tiny pistols glancing in the sun, and the Gerce Gre of 
the burning sunlight pouring down unheeded on the brave 
bright hawk eyes that had never, since they Grst opened to 
the world, drooped or dimmed for the rays of the sun, or 
the gaze of a lover, for the menace of death, or the pres- 
ence of war. 

Of course, she was a little Amazon ; of course, she was 
a little Guerrilla ; of course, she did not know what a blush 
meant; of course, her thoughts were as slang and as riot- 
ous as her mutinous mischief was in its act ; but she was 
i( bon soldat” as she was given to say, with a toss of her 
curly head, and she had some of the virtues of soldiers. 


224 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Soldiers had been about her ever since she first remem- 
bered having a wooden casserole for a cradle, and sucking 
down red wine through a pipe-stem. Soldiers had been 
her books, her teachers, her models, her guardians, and, 
later on, her lovers, all the days of her life. She had had 
no guiding*star, except the eagles on the standards ; she 
had had no cradle-song, except the rataplan and the re- 
veille ; she had had no sense of duty taught her, except 
to face fire boldly, never to betray a comrade, and to 
worship but two deities, “la Gloire” and “la France.” 

Yet there were tales told in the barrack-yards and under 
canvas of the little Amie du Drapeau, that had a gentler 
side. Of how softly she would touch the wounded ; of 
how deftly she would cure them. Of how carelessly she 
would dash throngh under a raking fire, to take a draught 
of water to a dying man. Of how she had sat by an old 
Grenadier’s death-couch, to sing to him, refusing to stir, 
though it was a fete at Chalons, and she loved fetes as 
only a French girl can. Of how she had ridden twenty 
leagues on a saddleless Arab horse, to fetch the surgeon 
of the Spahis to a Bedouin perishing in the desert of shot 
wounds. Of how she had sent every sou of her money 
to her mother, so long as that mother lived — a brutal, 
drunk, vile-tongued old woman, who had beaten her often- 
times, as the sole maternal attention, when she was but an 
infant. These things were ^old of Cigarette, and with a 
perfect truth. She was “mauvais sujet, mais bon sol - 
dat, v * as she classified herself. Her own sex would have 
seen no good in her ; but her comrades-at-arms could and 
did. Of a surety, she missed virtues that women prize ; 
but, not less of a surety, had she caught some that they 
miss. 

Singing her refrain, on she dashed now, swift as a grey- 
hound, light as a hare, glancing here and glancing there 
as she bounded over the picturesque desolation of the Cash- 
bah ; it was just noon, and there were few could brave the 
noon-heat as she did ; it was very still, there was only from 
a little distance the roll of the French kettle-drums where 
the drummers of the African regiments were practicing. 


* A thorough scamp, but a thorough soldier. 


225 


“l’AMIE DU DRAPE AU.” 

“ Holst ! le v’la !” cried Cigarette to herself, as her falcon- 
eyes darted right and left ; and, like a chamois, she leaped 
clown over the great masses of Turkish ruins, cleared the 
channel of a dry water-course, and alighted just in front 
of a Chasseur d’Afrique, who was sitting alone on a broken 
fragment of white marble, relic of some Moorish mosque, 
whose delicate columns, crowned with wind-sown grasses, 
rose behind him, against the deep intense blue of the cloud- 
less sky. 

lie was sitting thoughtfully enough, almost wearily, 
tracing figures in the dry sand of the soil with the point of 
his scabbard ; yet he had all the look about him of a bril- 
liant French soldier, of one who, moreover, had seen hot 
and stern service. He was bronzed, but scarcely looked 
so after the red, brown, and black of the Zouaves and the 
Turco, for his skin was naturally very fair, the features 
delicate, the eyes very soft — for which Monsieur Tata had 
growled contemptuously, “ a woman’s face ” — a long, silken 
chestnut beard swept over his chest; and his figure, as he 
leaned there in the blue and scarlet and gold of the Chas- 
seurs’ uniform, with his spurred heel thrust into the sand, 
and his arm resting on his knee, was, as Cigarette’s criti- 
cal eye told her, the figure of a superb cavalry rider, light, 
supple, long of limb, wide of chest, with every sinew and 
nerve firm-knit as links of steel. She glanced at his hands, 
which were very white, despite the sun of Algiers, and the 
labors that fall to a private of Chasseurs. 

11 Beau lion /”* she thought, “and noble, whatever 
he is.” 

But the best of blood was not new to her in the ranks 
of the Algerian regiments; she had known so many of 
them — those gilded butterflies of the Chaussee d’Antin, 
those lordly spendthrifts of the vieille roche , who had 
served in the battalions of the demie-cavalerie, or the 
squadrons of the French Horse, to be thrust nameless and 
unhonored into a sand-hole hastily dug with the bayonets 
in the hot hush of an African night. 

She woke him unceremoniously from his reverie, with a 
challenge to wine. 

“Ah-ha, raon Roumi !f Tata Leroux says you are 


* A handsome dandy. 


f Soldier. 


226 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


English ; by the faith, he must be right, or you would 
never sit musing there like an owl in the sunlight ! Take 
a draught of my burgundy; bright as rubies. I never sell 
bad wines — not I ! I know better than to drink them 
myself.” 

He started and rose ; and, before he took the bidon* 
bowed to her, raising his cap with a grave courteous obei- 
sance, a bow that had used to be noted in throne rooms 
for its perfection of grace. 

“Ah, ma belle, is it you ?” he said, wearily. “ You do 
me much honor.” 

Cigarette gave a little petulant twist to the tap of her 
wine-barrel. She was not used to that style of salutation. 
She half liked it — half resented it. It made her wish, 
with an impatient scorn for the wish, that she knew how 
to read, and had not her hair cut short like a boy’s — a 
weakness the little vivandibre had never been visited with 
before. 

“ Morbleu !” she said, pettishly. “ You are too fine for 
us, v.xon brave. In what country, I should wonder, does 
one learn such dainty ceremony as that ?” 

“ Where should one learn courtesies if not in France ?” 
he answered, wearily. He had danced with this girl-sol- 
dier the night before at a guinguette ball, seeing her for 
the first time, for it was almost the first time he had been 
in the city since the night when he had thrown the dice, 
and lost two Napoleons and the Bedouins to Claude de 
Chanrellon; but his thoughts were far from her in this 
moment. 

“Ouf! you have learnt carte and tierce with your 
tongue !” cried Cigarette, provoked to receive no more 
compliment than that. From generals and staff-officers, as 
from drummers and trumpeters, she was accustomed to 
flattery and wooing, luscious as sugared chocolate, and 
ardent as flirtation, with a barrack flavor about it, com- 
monly is ; she would, as often as not, to be sure, finish it 
with the butt-end of her pistol, or the butt-end of some 
bit of stinging sarcasm, but still for all that she liked it, 
and resented its omission. “They say you are English, 


* Little wooden drinking-cup. 


“L’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 227 

but I don’t believe it; you speak too soft, and you sound 
the double L’s too well. A Spaniard, eh ?” 

“ Do you find me so devout a Catholic that you think so ?” 

She laughed. “A Greek, then V 9 

“ Still worse. Have you seen me cheat at cards V 9 

“An Austrian ? You waltz like a White Coat V 9 

He shook his head. 

She stamped her little foot into the ground — a foot fit 
for a model, with its shapely military boot ; spurred, too, 
for Cigarette rode like a circus-rider. 

“ Becasse /* say what you are, then, at once.” 

“A soldier of France. Can you wish me more ?” 

For the first time her eyes flashed and softened — her 
one love was the tricolor. 

“ True 1” she said, simply. “ But you were not always 
a soldier of France ? You joined, they say, twelve years 
ago ? What were you before then ?” 

She here cast herself down in front of him, and, with 
her elbows on the sand, and her chin on her hands, watched 
him with all the frank curiosity and unmoved nonchalance 
imaginable, as she launched the question point-blank. 

“Before I” he said, slowly. “ Well — a fool.” 

“You belonged to the majority, then!” said Cigarette, 
with a piquance made a thousand times more piquant by 
the camp slang she spoke in. “ You should not have had 
to come into the ranks, mon ami ; majorities — specially 
that majority — have very smooth sailing generally!” 

He looked at her more closely, though she wearied him. 

“ Where have you got your ironies, Cigarette ? You 
are so young.” 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

“ Bah ! one is never young, and always young in camps. 
Young ? Pardieu ! When I was four, I could swear like 
a grenadier, plunder like a prefet, lie like a priest, and 
drink like a bohemian.” 

Yet — with all that — and it was the truth, the brow was 
so open under the close rings of the curls, the skin so clear 
under the sun-tan, the mouth so rich and so arch in its 
youth ! 


* Literally “you snipe!” Equivalent to “you goose!” 


228 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Why did you come into the service ?” she weut on, be- 
fore he had a chance to answer her. “You were born in 
the Noblesse — bah ! I know an aristocrat at a glance ! 
Ceux qui ont pris la peine de native J* — don’t you like 
Figaro ? My men played it last winter, and I was Figaro 
myself. Now many of those aristocrats come ; shoals of 
them ; but it is always for something. They all come for 
something; most of them have been ruined by the lionnes, 
a hundred million of francs gone in a quarter 1 Ah-bah ! 
what blind bats the best of you are 1 They have gambled, 
or bet, or got into hot water, or fought too many duels, or 
caused a court scandal, or something ; all the aristocrats 
that come to Africa are ruined. What ruined you, mon- 
sieur l’Aristocrat V ’ 

“ Aristocrat ? I am none. I am a Corporal of the 
Chasseurs.” 

44 Diable 1 I have known a Duke a Corporal ! What 
ruined you ?” 

44 What ruins most men, I imagine — folly.” 

“Folly sure enough 1” retorted Cigarette, with scornful 
acquiescence. She had no patience with him. He danced 
so deliciously, he looked so superb, and he would give her 
nothing but these absent answers. “ Wisdom don’t bring 
men who look as you look into the ranks of the volunteers 
for Africa. Besides, you are too handsome to be a sage 1” 

He laughed a little. 

“I never was one, that’s certain. And you are too 
pretty to be a cynic. ” 

“ A what ?” she did not know the word. “ Is that a good 
cigar you have ? Give me one. Do women smoke in your 
old country ?” 

“ Oh, yes — many of them.” 

“ Where is it, then ?” 

“I have no country — now.” 

44 But the one you had ?” 

“ I have forgotten I ever had one.” 

44 Did it treat you ill, then ?” 

“Not at all.” 

“ Had you anything you cared for in it ?” 


* Those who have given themselves the trouble to be born I 


229 


“l’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 


“ Well — yes.” 

“ What was it ? A woman ?” 

“ No — a horse.” 

He stooped his head a little as he said it, and traced 
more figures slowly in the sand. 

“Ah !” 

She drew a short, quick breath. She understood that; 
she would only have laughed at him had it been a woman ; 
Cigarette was more veracious than complimentary in her 
estimate of her own sex. 

“ There was a man in the Cuirassiers I knew,” she went 
on softly, “loved a horse like that; — he would have died 
for Cossack ; — but he was a terrible gambler, terrible. Not 
but what I like play myself. Well, one day he played and 
played till he was mad, and everything was gone ; and then 
in his rage he staked the only thing he had left. Staked 
and lost the horse ! He never said a word ; but he just 
slipped a pistol in his pocket, went to the stable, kissed 
Cossack once — twice — thrice — and shot himself through 
the heart.” 

“Poor fellow!” murmured the Chasseur dAfrique, in 
his chestnut beard. 

Cigarette was watching him with all the keenness of 
her falcon eyes ; “ he has gambled away a good deal 
too,” she thought. “ It is always the same old story with 
them.” 

“ Your cigars are good, mon lion ,” she said impatiently, 
as she sprang up, her lithe elastic figure in the bright 
vivandiere uniform standing out in full relief against the 
pearly gray of the ruined pillars, the vivid green of the 
rank vegetation, and the intense light of the noon. “ Your 
cigars are good, but it is more than >our company is ! 
Ma cantche! If you had been as dull as this last night, 
I would not have danced a single turn with you in the 
cancan !” 

And with a bound to which indignation lent wings like 
a swallow’s, the Friend of the Flag, insulted and amazed 
at the apathy with which her advances to friendship had 
been received, dashed off at her topmost speed, singing 
all the louder out of bravado. “ To have nothing more 
to say to me after dancing with me all night !” thought 
20 


230 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Cigarette, with fierce wrath at such contumely, the first 
neglect the pet of the Spahis had ever experienced. 

She was incensed too that she had been degraded into 
that momentary wish that she knew how to read, and 
looked less like a boy — just because a Chasseur with white 
hands and silent ways had made her a grave bow ! She 
was more incensed still because she could not get at his 
history, and felt, despite herself, a reluctance to bribe him 
for it with those cajoleries whose potency she had boasted 
to Tata Leroux. il Gare d lui /”* muttered the soldier- 
coquette passionately, in her little white teeth, so small 
and so pearly, though they had gripped a bridle tight be- 
fore then, when each hand was filled with a pistol. “Gare 
d lui! If he offend me there are five hundred swords that 
will thrust civility into him, five hundred shots that will 
teach him the cost of daring to provoke Cigarette !” 

En route through the town her wayward way took the 
pretty brunette Friend of the Flag as many devious mean- 
derings as a bird takes in a summer’s-day flight, when it 
stops here for a berry, there for a grass seed, here to dip 
its beak into cherries, there to dart after a dragon-fly, 
here to shake its wings in a brook, there to poise on a lily- 
bell. 

She loitered in a thousand places, for Cigarette knew 
everybody ; she chatted with a group of Turcos, she emp- 
tied her barrel for some Zouaves, she ate sweetmeats with 
a lot of negro boys, she boxed a little drummer’s ear for 
slurring over the “ r’lin tintin ” at his practice, she drank a 
demi-tasse with some officers at a cafe, she had ten min- 
utes’ pistol shooting, where she beat hollow a young dandy 
of the Guides who had come to look at Algiers for a week, 
and made even points with one of the first shots of the 
li Cavalerie d pied ) ,, 1f as the Algerian antithesis runs. 
Finally she paused before the open French window of a 
snow-white villa, half-buried in tamarisk and orange and 
pomegranate, with the deep-hued flow r ers glaring in the 
sun, and a hedge of wild cactus fencing it in ; through the 


* Let, him take care. 

f Literally “Horse-Foot;” a name given to the Zephyrs and 
Zouaves for tlreir excessive swiftness of limb. 


231 


“l’AMIE DU DRAPE AU. ” 

cactug slie made her way as easily as a rabbit burrows ; it 
would have been an impossibility to Cigarette to enter by 
any ordinary means ; and balancing herself lightly on the 
sill for a second, stood looking in at the chamber. 

“ Ho, M. le Marquis ! the Zouaves have drunk all my 
wine up ; fill me my keg with yours for once — the very best 
burgundy, mind. I’m half afraid your cellar will hurt my 
reputation.” 

The chamber was very handsome, hung and furnished 
in the very best Paris fashion, and all glittering with 
amber and ormolu and velvets ; in it half a dozen men — - 
officers of the cavalry — were sitting over their noon break- 
fast, and playing at lansquenet at the same time. The table 
was crowded with dishes of every sort, and wines of every 
vintage, and the fragrance of their bouquet, the clouds of 
smoke, and the heavy scent of the orange blossom with- 
out, mingled together in an intense perfume. He whom 
she addressed, M. le Marquis de Chateauroy, laughed, and 
looked up. 

“Ah, is it thee, my pretty brunette ? Take what thou 
wantest out of the ice pails.” 

“Premier cru ?”* asked Cigarette, with the dubious 
air and caution of a connoisseur. 

“ Comet 1” said M. le Marquis, amused with the precau- 
tions taken with his cellar, one of the finest in Algiers. 
u Come in and have some breakfast, ma, belle. Only pay 
the toll.” 

Where he sat between the window and the table he 
caught her in his arms and drew her pretty face down ; 
Cigarette, with the laugh of a saucy child, whisked her 
cigar out of her mouth, and blew a great cloud of smoke 
in his eyes. She had no particular fancy for him, though 
she had for his wines ; shouts of mirth from the other men 
completed the Marquis’s discomfiture, as she swayed away 
from him, and went over to the other side of the table, 
emptying some bottles unceremoniously into her wine-keg ; 
iced, ruby, perfumy claret that she could not have bought 
anywhere for the barracks. 


* The best growths ? 


232 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Hoh\ !” cried the Marquis, “ thou art not generally so 
coy with thy kisses, petite. ” 

Cigarette tossed her head. 

“ I don’t like bad clarets after good ! I’ve just been 
with your Corporal, ‘ Bel-a-faire-peur ;’ you are no beauty 
after him, M. le Colonel.” 

Chateauroy’s face darkened ; he was a colossal-limbed 
man, whose bone was iron, and whose muscles were like 
oak-fibers ; he had a dark, keen head like an eagle’s, the 
brow narrow but very high, looking higher because the 
close-cut hair was worn off the temples, thin lips hidden 
by heavy curling moustaches, and a skin burnt black by 
long African service. Still he was fairly handsome enough 
not to have muttered so heavy an oath as he did at the 
vivandibre’s jest. 

“ Sacrebleu ! I wish my corporal were shot 1 one can 
never hear the last of him.” 

Cigarette darted a quick glance at him. “ Oh ho, jeal- 
ous mon brave !” thought her quick wits. “And why, I 
wonder ?” 

“ You haven’t a finer soldier in your Chasseurs, mon 
cher ; don’t wish him shot, for the good of the service,” 
said the Viscount de Chanrellon, who had now a command 
of his own in the Light Cavalry of Algiers. “ Pardieu ! 
if I had to choose whether I’d be backed by ‘ Bel-a-faire- 
peur,’ or by six other men in a skirmish, I’d choose him, 
and risk the odds.” 

Chateauroy tossed off his burgundy with a contemptu- 
ous impatience. 

“ Diable ! that is the galamatias* one always hears about 
this fellow — as if he were a second Roland, or a revivified 
Bayard ! I see nothing particular in him, except that he’s 
too fine a gentleman for the ranks.” 

“ Fine ? ah I” laughed Cigarette. “ He made me a bow 
this morning like a court chamberlain ; and his beard is 
like carded silk, and he has such woman’s hands, mon 
Dieu ! But he is a croc-mitaine too.” 

“ Rather 1” laughed Claude de Chanrellon, as magnifi- 
cent a soldier himself as ever crossed swords. “ I said ho 


* Exaggerated nonsense. 


233 


"l’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.'’ 

would eat fire the very minute he played that queer game 
at dice with me years ago. I wish I had him instead of 
you, Chateauroy ; like lightning in a charge ; and yet the 
very man for a dangerous bit of secret service that wants 
the softness of a panther. We all let our tongues go too 
much, but he says so little — -just a word here, a word 
there, — when one’s wanted — no more ; and he’s the devil’s 
own to fight.” 

The Marquis heard the praise of his Corporal, knitting 
his heavy brows ; it was evident the private was no favor- 
ite with him. 

“ The fellow rides well enough,” he said, with an affec- 
tation of carelessness ; “ there — for what I see — is the end 
of his marvels. I wish you had him, Claude, with all my 
soul.” 

“Oh he!” cried Chanrellon, wiping the Rhenish off his 
tawny moustaches, “ he should have been a captain by this 
if I had. Morbleu ! he is a splendid sabreur — kills as many 
men to his own sword as I could myself, when it comes to 
a hand in hand fight ; breaks horses in like magic ; rides 
them like the wind ; has a hawk’s eye over open country; 
obeys like clock-work ; what more can you want ?” 

“Obeys! yes,” said the Colonel of Chasseurs, with a 
snarl. “ He’d obey without a word if you ordered him to 
walk up to a cannon’s mouth, and be blown from it ; but 
he gives you such a d — d languid grand seigneur * glance 
as he listens that one would think he commanded the regi- 
ment.” 

“But he’s very popular with your men, too ?” 

“ Monsieur, the worst quality a Corporal can have. His 
idea of maintaining discipline is to treat them to cognac 
and give them tobacco.” 

“ Pardieu ! not a bad way either with our French fire- 
eaters. II connait son monde ; ce brave. f Your squad- 
rons would go to the devil after him.” 

The Colonel gave a grim laugh. 

“I dare say nobody knows the way better.” 

Cigarette, flirting with the other officers, drinking cham- 


* Fine gentleman. 

f He knows them, he has to deal with, — that brave fellow. 
20 * 


234 


UNDER TWO FLAGS* W 

pagno by great glassfuls, eatiDg bonbons from one, sipping 
another’s soup, pulling the limbs of a succulent ortolan to 
pieces with a relish, and devouring truffles with all the zest 
of a bon-vivant, did not lose a word, and catching the in- 
flection of Ch&teauroy’s voice, settled with her own thoughts 
that “Bel-a-faire-peur ” had not a fair field or a smooth 
course with his Colonel. The weather-cock heart of the 
little “ Friend of the Flag ” veered round, with her sex’s 
common custom, to the side that was the weakest. 

“ Dieu de Dieu, M. le Colonel 1” she cried, while she ate 
M. le Colonel’s foie gras with as little ceremony and as 
much enjoyment as would be expected from a young plun- 
derer accustomed to think a meal all the better spiced by 
.■jeing stolen “by the rules of war,” — “whatever else your 
.landsome Corporal is, he is an aristocrat. Ah, ah, I know 
die aristocrats — I do ! Their touch is so gentle, and their 
speech is so soft, and they have no slang of the camp, and 
yet they are such diablolins to fight and eat steel, and die 
laughing all so quiet and nonchalant. Give me the aristo- 
crats — the real thing, you know. Not the ginger-cakes, 
just gilt, that are ashamed of being honest bread — but the 
old blood like Bel-a-faire-peur.” 

The Colonel laughed, but restlessly; the little ingrate 
had aimed at a sore point in him. He was of the First 
Empire Nobility, and he was weak enough, though a fierce, 
dauntless, iron-nerved soldier, to be discontented with the 
great fact that his father had been a hero of the Army of 
Italy, and scarce inferior in genius to Massena, because im- 
patient of the minor one that, before strapping on a knap- 
sack to have his first taste of war under Custine, the Mar- 
shal had been but a postillion at a posting inn in the heart 
of the Nivernais. 

“Ah, my brunette !” he answered with a rough laugh, 
“have you taken my popular Corporal for your lover? 
You should give your old friends warning first, or he may 
chance to get an ugly spit on a saber.” 

The Amie du Drapeau tossed off her sixth glass of cham- 
pagne. She felt for the first time in her life a flush of hot 
blood on her brown clear cheek, well used as she was to 
such jests and such lovers as these. 

“ Ma foi I” she said coolly. “ He would be more likely 


235 . 


“l’AMIE DU DRAPEAU.” 

to spit than be spitted if it came to a duel. I should like 
to see him in a duel ; there is not a prettier sight in the 
world when both men have science. As for fighting for 
me 1 Morbleu ! I will thank nobody to have the impu- 
dence to do it, unless I order them out. Coqueline got 
shot for me, you remember; — he was a pretty fellow, 
Coqueline, and they killed him so clumsily, that they dis- 
figured him terribly — it was quite a pity. I said then I 
would have no more handsome men fight about me. You 
may, if you like, M. le Faucon Noir.”* 

Which title she gave with a saucy laugh, hitting with a 
chocolate bonbon the black African-burnt visage of the 
omnipotent chief she had the audacity to attack. High or 
low, they were all the same- to Cigarette. She would have 
“ slanged ” the Emperor himself with the self-same cool- 
ness, and the Army had given her a passport of immunity 
so wide, that it would have fared ill with any one who had 
ever attempted to bring the vivandihre to book for her ut- 
termost mischief. 

“ By-the-way I” she went on, quick as thought, with her 
reckless devil-may-care gayety. “ One thing ! — Your Cor- 
poral will demoralize the Army of Africa, m’sieu ?” 

“Eh ? He shall have an ounce of cold lead before he 
does. What in ?” 

“ He will demoralize it,” said Cigarette, with a saga- 
cious shake of her head. “ If they follow his example we 
shan’t have a Chasseur, or a Spahis, or a Piou-piou, or a 
Sapeur worth anything ” 

“ Sacre ! What does he do ?” The Colonel’s strong 
teeth bit savagely through his cigar; he would have given 
much to have been able to find a single thing of insubor- 
dination or laxity of duty in a soldier who irritated and an- 
noyed him, but who obeyed him implicitly, and was one of 
the most brilliant “ fire-eaters ” of his regiment. 

“ He won’t only demoralize the army,” pursued Cigar- 
ette, with vivacious eloquence, “ but if his example is fol- 
lowed, he’ll ruin the Prefets, close the Bureaux, destroy 
the Exchequer, beggar all the officials, make African life as 


* Black Hawk. 


236 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


tame as milk and water, and rob you , M. le Colonel, of 
your very highest and dearest privilege 1” 

“ Sacrebleu !” cried her hearers, as their hands instinct** 
ivcly sought their swords, “ what does he do ?” 

Cigarette looked at them out of her arch black lashes. 

“Why, he never thieves from the Arabs! If the fash* 
ion come in, adieu to our occupation. Court-martial him, 
Colonel l” 

With which sally Cigarette thrust her pretty soft curls 
back off her temples, and launched herself into lansquenet 
with all the ardor of a gambler and the vivacity of a child, 
her eyes flashing, her cheeks flushing, her little teeth set, 
her whole soul in the whirl of the game, made all the more 
riotous by the peals of laughter from her comrades, and 
the wines that were washed down like water. Cigarette 
was a terrible little gamester, and had gaming made very 
easy to her, for it was the creed of the Army that her 
losses never counted, but her gains were paid to her often 
double or treble. Indeed, so well did she play, and so well 
did the goddess of hazard favor her, that she might have 
grown a millionaire on the fruits of her dice and her cards, 
but for this fact, that whatever the little Friend of the Flag 
had in her hands one hour, was given away the next, to the 
first wounded soldier, or ailing veteran, or needy Arab 
woman that required the charity. 

As much gold was showered on her as on Isabel of the 
Jockey Club; but Cigarette was never the richer for it. 
“Bah 1” she would say, when they told her of her heedless- 
ness, “ money is like a mill, no good standing still. Let it 
turn, turn, turn, as fast as ever it can, and the more bread 
will come from it for the people to eat.” 

The vivandiere was by instinct a fine political economist. 

Meanwhile where she had left him among the stones of 
the ruined mosque, the Chasseur, whom they nick-named 
Bel-a-faire-peur, in a double sense, because of his “ woman’s 
face,” as Tata Leroux termed it, and because of the terror 
his sword had become through North Africa, sat motion- 
less with his right arm resting on his knee, and his spurred 
heel thrust into the sand, the sun shining down unheeded 
in its fierce burning glare on the chestnut masses of his 
beard, and the bright glitter of his uniform. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


237 


He was a dashing cavalry soldier, who had had a dozen 
wounds cut over his body by the Bedouin swords, in many 
and hot skirmishes; who had waited through sultry Afri- 
can nights for the lion’s tread, and had fought the desert- 
king and conquered; who had ridden a thousand miles 
over the great sand waste, and the boundless arid plains, 
and slept under the stars with the saddle beneath his head, 
and his rifle in his hand, all through the night; who had 
served, and served well, in frerce, arduous, unremitting 
work, in trying campaigns and in close discipline; who 
had blent the verve, the brilliance, the daring, the eat- 
drink-and-enjoy-for-to-morrow-we-die of the French Chas- 
seur, with something that was very different, and much more 
tranquil. 

Yet, though as bold a man as any enrolled in the French 
Service, he sat alone here in the shadow of the column, 
thoughtful, motionless, lost in silence. 

In his left hand was a Galignani, six months old, and 
his eyes rested on a line in the obituary : 

“ On the 10th ult., at Royallieu, suddenly, the Right 
Hon. Denzil, Yiscount Royallieu; aged 90.” 


CHAPTER XYI. 

CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 

Vanitas vanitatum ! The dust of death lies over the 
fallen altars of Bubastis, where once all Egypt came down 
the flood of glowing Nile, and Herodotus mused under 
the shadowy foliage, looking on the lake-like rings of 
water. The Temple of the Sun, where the beauty of 
Asenath beguiled the Israelite to forget his sale into bond- 
age and banishment, lies in shapeless hillocks, over which 
canter the mules of dragomen and chatter the tongues of 
tourists. Where the Lutetian Palace of Julian saw the 
Legions rush, with torches and with wine-bowls, to salute 


238 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


their darling as Augustus, the sledge-hammer and the 
stucco of the Haussmann fiat bear desolation in their wake. 
Levantine dice are rattled, where Hypatia’s voice was 
heard. Bills of exchange are trafficked in, where Cleo- 
patra wandered under the palm aisles of her rose gardens. 
Drummers roll their caserne-calls, where Drusus fell and 
Sulla laid down dominion. 

And here — in the land of Hannibal, in the conquest of 
Scipio, in the Phoenicia, whose loveliness used to flash in 
the burning, sea-mirrored sun, while her fleets went east- 
ward and westward for the honey of Athens and the gold 
of Spain — here Cigarette danced the cancan 1 

An auberge* of the barriere swung its sign of the As 
de Pique, where feathery palms once had waved above 
mosques of snowy gleam, with marble domes and jeweled 
arabesques, and the hush of prayer under columned aisles. 
“Debits de vin, liqueurs, et tabac , 1 ’ f was written, where 
once verses of the Koran had been blazoned by reverent 
hands along porphyry cornices and capitals of jasper. A 
Cafe Chantant reared its impudent little roof, where once, 
far back in the dead cycles, Phoenician warriors had watched 
the galleys of the gold-haired favorite of the gods bear 
down to smite her against whom the one unpardonable sin 
of rivalry to Rome was quoted. 

The riot of a Paris guinguette was heard, where once 
the tent of Belissarius might have been spread above the 
majestic head that towered in youth above the tempestu- 
ous seas of Gothic armies, as when, silvered with age, it 
rose as a rock against the onsweeping flood of Bulgarian 
hordes. The grisette charms of little tobacconists, millin- 
ers, flower-girls, lemonade-sellers, bonbon-sellers, and Giles 
de joie flaunted themselves in the gas-light, where the lus- 
trous sorceress eyes of Amtonina might have glanced over 
the Afric Sea, while her wanton’s heart, so strangely filled 
with leonine courage and shameless license, heroism and 
brutality, cruelty and self-devotion, swelled under the pur- 
ples of her delicate vest, at the glory of the man she at 
once dishonored and adored. 


* Little hostelry. 

f Here are sold wine, liquor, and tobacco. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


239 


Yanitas vanitatum I Under the thirsty soil, under the 
ill-paved streets, under the arid turf, the Legions lay dead, 
with the Carthaginians they had borne down under the 
mighty pressure of their plalanx ; and the Byzantine ranks 
were dust side by side with the soldiers of Gelimer. And 
here, above the graves of two thousand centuries, the little 
light feet of Cigarette danced joyously in that triumph of 
the Living, who never remember that they also are danc- 
ing onward to the tomb. 

It was a low-roofed, white plastered, gaudily-decked, 
smoke-dried mimicry of the guinguettes beyond Paris. The 
long room, that was an imitation of the Salle de Mars on 
a Lilliputian scale, had some bunches of lights flaring here 
and there, and had its walls adorned with laurel wreaths, 
stripes of tri-colored paint, vividly-colored medallions of 
the Second Empire, and a little pink gauze flourished about 
it, that flashed into brightness under the jets of flame — 
trumpery, yet trumpery which, thanks to the instinct of 
the French esprit, harmonized, and did not vulgarize ; 
a gift Freuch instinct alone possesses. The floor was 
bare and well polished ; the air full of tobacco smoke, 
wine fumes, brandy odors, and an overpowering scent of 
oil, garlic, and pot au feu. Riotous music pealed through 
it, that even in its clamor kept a certain silvery ring, a 
certain rhythmical cadence. Pipes were smoked, barrack 
slang, camp slang, barriere slang, temple slang, were chat- 
tered volubly. Theresa’s songs were sung by bright-eyed, 
sallow-cheeked Parisiennes, and chorused by the lusty 
lungs of Zouaves and Turcos. Good humor prevailed, 
though of a wild sort ; the mad gallop of the Rigolboche 
had just flown round the room, like lightning, to the crash 
and the tumult of the most headlong music that ever set 
spurred heels stamping and grisettes’ heels flying : and now, 
where the crowds of soldiers and women stood back to 
leave her a clear place, Cigarette was dancing alone. 

She had danced the cancan; she had danced since sun- 
set ; she had danced till she had tired out cavalrymen, who 
could go days and nights in the saddle without a sense of 
fatigue, and made Spahis cry quarter, who never gave it foy 
any chance in the battle-field ; and she was dancing now 
like a little P»acchante, as fresh as if she had just sprung 


240 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


up from a long summer day’s rest. Dancing as slic would 
dance only now and then, when caprice took her, and her 
wayward vivacity was at its height, on the green space be- 
fore a tent full of general officers, on the bare floor of a 
barrack-room, under the canvas of a fete-day’s booth, or 
as here, in the music-hall of a Cafe. 

Marshals had more than once essayed to bribe the fa- 
mous little Friend of the Flag to dance for them, and had 
failed : but, for a set of soldiers, war-worn, dust-covered, 
weary with toil and stiff with wounds, she would do it, till 
they forgot their ills, and got as intoxicated with it as with 
champagne. For her gros bebees, if they were really in 
want of it, she would do anything. She would flout a 
star-covered general, box the ears of a brilliant aid, send 
killing missiles of slang at a dandy of a regiment de 
famille, and refuse point-blank a Russian grand duke ; but 
to “mes enfans ,” as she was given to calling the rough 
tigers and grissly veterans of the Army of Africa, Cigar- 
ette was uever capricious, however mischievously she would 
rally, or contemptuously would rate them, when they de- 
served it. 

And she was dancing for them now. 

Her soft short curls all fluttering, her cheeks all bright 
with a scarlet flush, her eyes as black as night, and full of 
fire, her gay little uniform, with its scarlet and purple, 
making her look like a fuschia bell tossed by the wind to 
and fro, ever so lightly, on its delicate swaying stem, Ci- 
garette danced with the wild grace of an Alrneh, of a Bay- 
adere, of a Nautch girl, as untutored and instinctive in her 
as its song to a bird, as its swiftness to a chamois. To see 
Cigarette was like drinking light fiery wines, whose intox- 
ication was gay as mischief, and sparkling as themselves. 
All the warmth of Africa, all the wit of France, all the 
bohemianism of the Flag, all the caprices of her sex, were 
in that bewitching dancing. Flashing, fluttering, circling, 
whirling, glancing like a saber’s gleam, tossing like a flow- 
er’s head, bounding like an antelope, launching like an 
arrow, darting like a falcon, skimming like a swallow; 
then for an instant resting as indolently, as languidly, as 
voluptuously, as a water-lily rests on the water’s • breast ; 
—Cigarette en Bacchante no man could resist 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


241 


When once she abandoned herself to the afflatus of that 
dance delirium, she did with her beholders what she would. 
The famous Cachucha, that made the reverend cardinals of 
Spain fling off their pontifical vestments, and surrender 
themselves to the witchery of the castanets and the gleam 
of the white twinkling feet, was never more irresistible, 
more enchanting, more full of wild, soft, bizarre, delicious 
grace. It was a poem of motion and color, an ode to 
Venus and Bacchus. 

All her heart was in it — that heart of a girl and a sol- 
dier, of a hawk and a kitten, of a Bohemian and an epicu- 
rean, of a Lascar and a child, which beat so brightly and 
so boldly under the dainty gold aiglettes, with which she 
laced her dashing little uniform. 

In the Chambree of Zephyrs, among the Douars of 
Spahis, on sandy soil under African stars, above the heaped 
plunder brought in from a razzia, in the yellow light of 
candles fastened to bayonets stuck in the earth at a bivouac, 
on the broad deal table of a barrack-room full of black- 
browed conscrits indigenes * amid the thundering echoes 
of the Marsellaise des Bataillons shouted from the brawny 
chests of Zouaves, Cigarette had danced, danced, danced, 
till her whole vivacious life seemed pressed into one hour, 
and all the mirth and mischief of her little brigand’s soul 
seemed to have found their utterance in those tiny, slender, 
spurred, and restless feet, that never looked to touch the 
earth which they lit on lightly as a bird alights, only to 
leave it afresh, with wider swifter bound, with ceaseless 
airy flight. 

So she danced now, in the cabaret of the As de Pique. 
She had a famous group of spectators, not one of whom 
knew how to hold himself back from springing in to seize 
her in his arms, and whirl with her down the floor. But it 
had been often told them by experience, that, unless she 
beckoned one out, a blow of her clinched hand and a cessa- 
tion of her impromptu pas de seul, would be the immediate 
result. Her spectators were renowned croque-mitaines ; 
men, whose names rang like trumpets in the ear of Kabyle 
and Marabout ; men who had fought under the noble colors 


Q 


Conscripts drawn from tlie native population. 

21 


242 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


of the day of Mazagran, or had cherished or emulated its 
traditions ; men who had the salient features of all the 
varied species that make up the soldiers of Africa. 

There was Ben Arslan, with his crimson burnous wrapped 
round his towering stature, from whom Moor and Jew fled, 
as before a pestilence, the fiercest, deadliest, most volup- 
tuous of all the Spahis ;* brutalized in his drink, merciless 
in his loves; all an Arab when once back in the desert, 
with a blow of a scabbard his only payment for forage, and 
a thrust of his saber his only apology to husbands, but to 
the service a slave, and in the combat a lion. 

There was Beau-Bruno, a dandy of Turcos,f whose 
snowy turban and olive beauty bewitched half the women 
of Algeria, who himself affected to neglect his conquests, 
with a supreme contempt for those indulgences, but who 
would have been led out and shot rather than forego the 
personal adornings, for which his adjutant and his capitaine 
du bureau growled unceasing wrath at him with every day 
that shone. 

There was Pouffer-de-Bire, a littlq Tringlo, J the wittiest, 
gayest, happiest, sunniest-terapered droll in all the army, 
who would sing the camp-songs so joyously through a 
burning march, that the whole of the battalions would 
break into one refrain as with one throat, and press on 
laughing, shouting, running, heedless of thirst, or heat, or 
famine, and as full of monkey-like jests as any gamins. 

There was En-ta-maboull,§ so nicknamed from his love 
for that unceremonious slang phrase — a Zouave who had 
the history of a Gil Bias, and the talent of a Crichton, the 
morals of an Abruzzi brigand, and the wit of a Falstaff; 
aquiline-nosed, eagle-eyed, black-skinned as an African, 
with adventures enough in his life to outvie Munchausen, 
with a purse always pleine de vide, || as the camp sentence 
runs ; who thrust his men through the body as coolly as 
others kill wasps ; who roasted a shepherd over a camp-fire 
for contumacy in concealing Bedouin whereabouts; yet 
who would pawn his last shirt at the bazaar to help a com- 


* Arab cavalry. f Native infantry. 

X Soldier of the commissariat and of the baggage-trains. 

§ Est-ce-que-tu es fou? in ordinary French. |J Penniless. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


243 


rade in debt, and had once substituted himself for, and re- 
ceived fifty blows on the loins in the stead of, his sworn 
friend, whom he loved with that love of David for Jona- 
than, which, in Caserne life, is readier found than in Club 
life. 

There was Pattes-du-Tigre ; a small wiry supple-limbed 
fire-eater, with a skin like a coal and eyes that sparkled 
like the live coal’s flame, a veteran of the Joyeux, who 
could discipline his roughs as a sheep-dog his lambs, and 
who had one curt martial law for his detachment, brief as 
Draco’s, and trimmed to suit either an attack on the en- 
emy or the chastisement of an indiscipline ,* lying in one 
simple word — “ Fusillez.”f 

There was Barbe-Grise, a grisly ancien J of Zephyrs, who 
held the highest repute of any in his battalion for rushing 
on to a foe with a foot speed that could equal the canter 
of an Arab’s horse; for having stood alone once the brunt 
of thirty Bedouins’ attack, and ended by beating them back, 
though a dozen spear-heads were launched into his body, 
and his pantalons garqnces were filled with his own blood ; 
and for framing a matchless system of night plunder that 
swept the country bare as a table-rock in an hour, and 
made the colons surrender every hidden treasure, from a pot 
of gold to a hen’s eggs, from a caldron of couscoussou to 
a tom-cat. 

There was Alcide Echauffourees, also a Zephyr, § who 
had his nickname from the marvelous changes of costume 
with which he would pursue his erratic expedition, and 
deceive the very Arabs themselves into believing him a 
born Mussulman; a very handsome fellow, the Lauzun of 
his battalion, the Brummel of his Caserne; coquette with 
his kepi on one side of his graceful head, and his mous- 
taches soft as a lady’s hair, whose paradise was a score of 
dangerous intrigues, and whose seventh heaven was a duel 
with an infuriated husband; incorrigibly lazy, but with the 
Italian laziness, as of the panther who sleeps in the sun, 
and with such episodes of romance, mischief, love, and 


* A mutineer. f Fire ! t Veteran. 

§ Zephyr is a name given to the “Battalion of the Rebellius” in 
Algeria. 


244 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


deviltry in liis twenty-five years of existence as would leave 
behind them all the invention of Dumas, pere ou fils. 

All these and many more like them were the spectators 
of Cigarette’s ballet, applauding with the wild hurrah of 
the desert, with the clashing of spurs, with the thunder of 
feet, with the demoniac shrieks of irrepressible adoration 
and delight. 

And every now and then her bright eyes would flash 
over the ring of familiar faces, and glance from them with 
an impatient disappointment as she danced; her gros 
tehees were not enough for her. She wanted a Chasseur 
with white hands and a grave smile to be among them ; 
and she shook back her curls, and flushed angrily as she 
noted his absence, and went on with the pirouettes, the 
circling flights, the wild resistless abandonment of her in- 
spirations, till she w r as like a little desert-hawk that is in- 
toxicated with the scent of prey borne down upon the wind, 
and wheeling like a mad thing in the transparent ether 
and the hot sun-glow. 

L’As de Pique was the especial estaminet of the chasses- 
marais. He was in the house ; she knew it; had she not 
seen him drinking with some others, or rather paying for 
all but taking little himself, just as she entered ? He was 
in the house, this mysterious Bel-a-faire-peur — and was not 
here to see her dauce 1 Not here to see the darling of the 
Douars; the pride of every Chacal, Zephyr, and Chasseur 
in Africa; the Amie du Drapeau who was adored by every 
one, from Chefs de Bataillons t o fantassins, and toasted by 
every drinker, from Algiers to Oran, in the Champagne of 
Messieurs les Generaux as in the Cric of the Loustics 
round a camp-fire ! 

He was not there ; he was leaning over the little wooden 
ledge of a narrow window in an inner room, from which 
one by one, some Spahis and some troopers of his own 
trihu ,* with whom he had just been drinking such bur- 
gundies and brandies as the place could give, had sloped 
away one by one under the irresistible attraction of the 
vivandiere. An attraction, however, that had not seduced 
them till all the bottles were emptied, bottles more in num- 


* Squadron. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


245 


ber and higher in cost than was prudent in a corporal who 
had but his pay, and that scant enough, to keep himself, 
and who had known what it was to find a roll of white 
bread and a cup of coffee a luxury beyond all reach, and 
to have to faire la lessive* up to the last thing in his 
haversack to buy a toss of thin wine when he was dying 
of thirst, or a slice of melon when he was parching with 
African fever. 

But prudence had at no time been his specialty, and the 
reckless life of Algeria was not one to teach it, with its 
frank brotherly fellowship that bound the soldiers of each 
battalion, or each squadron, so closely in a fraternity of 
which every member took as freely as he gave ; its gay, 
careless carpe diem camp-philosophy, the unconscious phi- 
losophy of men who enjoyed heart and soul if they had a 
chance, because they knew they might be shot dead before 
another day broke ; and its swift and vivid changes that 
made tirailleurs and troopers one hour rich as a king in 
loot, in wine, in dark-eyed captives at the sacking of a tribe, 
to be the next day famished, scorched, dragging their weary 
limbs, or urging their sinking horses through endless sand 
and burning heat, glad to sell a cartouche, if they dared 
so break regimental orders, or to rifle a henroost if they 
came near one, to get a mouthful of food, changing every- 
thing in their haversack for a sup of dirty water, and 
driven to pay with the thrust of a saber for a lock of 
wretched grass to keep their beasts alive through the sick- 
liness of a sirocco. 

All these taught no caution to any nature normally with- 
out it; and the chief thing that his regiment had loved in 
him whom they named Bel-it-faire-peur from the first day 
that he had bound his red waist-sash about his loins, and the 
officers of the bureau had looked over the new volunteer 
murmuring admiringly in their teeth “ Ge gaillard ira 
loin !” f had been that all he had was given, free as the 
winds, to any who asked or needed. 

The all was slender enough. Unless he live by the in- 
genuity of his own manufactures, or by thieving or intimi- 


* Sell his whole effects. 

■j- “ This gallant will do great things 1” 


21 * 


246 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


dating the people of the country, a French soldier has but 
barren fare and a hard struggle with hunger and poverty; 
and it was the one murmur against him, when he was low- 
est in the ranks, that he would never follow the fashion, in 
wringing out by force or threat the possessions of the na- 
tive population. The one reproach, that made his fellow- 
lascars* impatient and suspicious of him, was that he re- 
fused any share in those rough arguments of blows and 
lunges with which they were accustomed to persuade every 
victim they came nigh to yield them up all such treasures 
of food, or drink, or riches, from sheep’s liver and cous- 
coussou, to Morocco carpets and skins of brandy and coins 
hid in the sand, that the Arabs might be so unhappy as to 
own in their reach. That the fattest pullet of the poorest 
Bedouin was as sacred to him as the banquet of his own 
Chef d’Escadron, let him be ever so famished after the 
longest day’s march, was an eccentricity, and an insult to 
the usages of the corps, for which not even his daring and 
his popularity could wholly procure him pardon. 

But this defect in him was counterbalanced by the lav- 
ishness with which his decompte f was lent, given, or spent 
in the very moment of its receipt. If a man of his tribu 
wanted anything, he knew that Bel-a-faire-peur would offer 
his last sous to aid him, or, if money were all gone, would 
sell the last trifle he possessed to the Riz-pain-sels,J to 
get enough to assist his comrade. It was a virtue which 
went far to vouch for all others in the view of his lawless, 
open-handed brethren of the Chambree§ and the Camp, 
and made them forgive him many moments, when the mood 
of silence and the habit of solitude, not uncommon with 
him, would otherwise have incensed a fraternity with whom 
11 tu fais suisse /” || is the deadliest charge, and the sentence 
of excommunication against any who dare to provoke it. 

One of those moods was on him now. 

He had had a drinking bout with the men, who had left 
him, and had laughed as gayly and as carelessly, if not as 


* Soldiers. -}• Pay. 

X Working-soldiers of the administration. 
| Sleeping-room in a barrack. 

|| You live alone, or apart. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


24 * 


riotously, as any of them at the wild mirth, the unbridled 
license, the amatory recitations, and the Bacchic odes in 
their lawless sapir, that had ushered the night in while his 
wines unlocked the tongues and flowed down the throats of 
the fierce Arab-Spahis and the French cavalry-men. But 
now he leant out of the pent-up casement, with his arms 
folded on the sill and a short pipe in his teeth, thoughtful 
and solitary after the orgie, whose heavy fumes and clouds 
of smoke still hung heavily on the air within. 

The window looked on a little, dull, close court-yard, 
where the yellow leaves of a withered gourd trailed drea- 
rily over the gray uneven stones. The clamor of the ap- 
plause and the ring of the music from the dancing-hall 
echoed with a whirling-din in his ear, and made, in sharper 
stranger contrast, the quiet of the narrow court with its 
strip of starry sky above its four high walls. 

He leaned there musing and grave, hearing little of the 
noise about him ; there was always noise of some sort in 
the clangor and tumult of barrack or bivouac life, and he 
had grown to heed it no more than he heeded the roar of 
desert beasts about him, when he slept in the desert or the 
hills ; but looking dreamily out at the little shadowy square, 
with the sear gourd leaves and the rough misshapen stones. 
His present and his future were neither much brighter than 
the gloomy walled-in den on which he gazed. 

Twelve years before, when he had been ordered into the 
champ de manoeuvre * for the first time, to see of what 
mettle he was made, the instructor had watched him with 
amazed eyes, muttering to himself, “Tiens! ce n’estpas un 
* bleu ’ — ceci! f Whatarider! Dieu de Dieu 1 he knows 
more than we can teach. He has served before now — 
served in some emperor’s picked guard 1” 

Aud when he had passed from the exercising-ground to 
the campaign, the Army had found in him one of the most 
splendid of its many splendid soldiers ; and in the folios 
matricules% there was no page of achievements, of ex- 
ploits, of services, of dangers, that showed a more brilliant 


* Exercise-ground. 

f “ Wliew ! This is no raw recruit, — this fellow 1” 
J Daily register of the troopers’ conduct. 


248 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


array of military deserts than his. Yet, for many years, 
he had been passed by unnoticed : he had now not even 
the cross on his chest, and he had only slowly and with 
infinite difficulty been promoted so far as he stood now — a 
Corporal in the Chasseurs d’Afrique — a step only just ac- 
corded him because wounds innumerable and distinctions 
without number in countless skirmishes had made it impos- 
sible to cast him wholly aside any longer. 

The cause lay in the implacable enmity of one man — his 
Chief. 

Far-sundered as they were by position, and rarely as 
they could come in actual contact, that merciless weight of 
animosity from the great man to his soldier, had laid on 
the other like iron, and clogged him from all advancement. 
His thoughts were of it now. Only to-day, at an inspec- 
tion, the accidentally-broken saddle-girth of a boy-conscript 
had furnished pretext for a furious reprimand, a volley of 
insolent opprobrium hurled at himself, under which he had 
had to sit mute in his saddle, with no other sign that he 
was human beneath the outrage than the blood that would, 
despite himself, flush the pale bronze of his forehead. His 
thoughts were on it now. 

“ There are many losses that are bitter enough, ” he 
mused ; “but there is not one so bitter as the loss of the 
right to resent!” 

A whirlwind of laughter, so loud that it drowned the 
music of the shrill violins and thundering drums, echoed 
through the rooms and shook him from his reverie. 

“ They are bons enfants ,” he thought, with a half smile, 
as he listened ; “ they are more honest in their mirth, as in 
their wrath, than we ever were in that old world of mine.” 

Amid the shouts, the crash, the tumult, the gay ringing 
voice of Cigarette rose distinct. She had apparently 
paused in her dancing to exchange one of those passes of 
arms which were her specialty, in the Sabir that she, a 
child of the regiments of Africa, had known as her mother 
tongue 

“II fait suisse ?” she cried, disdainfully. “Paf! et tu 
as bu de sa gourde , chenapan ?”* 


* You call him a misanthrope ? and you have been drinking aj 
his expense, you rascal ? 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


249 


Tlie grumbled assent of the accused was inaudible. 
“IngratP' pursued the scornful, triumphant voice of the 
Vivandibre; “you would bazarder* your mother’s grave- 
clothes 1 You would eat your children, en fricassee ! You 
would sell your father’s bones for a draught of tord - 
boyaud/f Va Ven, chien /” 

The screams of mirth redoubled ; Cigarette’s style of 
withering eloquence was suited to all her auditors’ tastes, 
and, under the chorus of laughs at his cost, her infuriated 
adversary plucked up courage and roared forth a defiance. 

“ Ma cantclie! white hands and a brunette’s face are 
fine things for a soldier. He kills women — he kills women 
with his lady’s grace ! Grand ’ chose ga /” 

“ He does npt pull their ears to make them give him their 
style, % and beat them with a matraque§ if they don’t fry 
his eggs fast enough, as you do, Barbe-Grise,” retorted 
the contemptuous tones of the champion of the absent. 
“ White hands, morbleu ! Well, his hands are not always 
in other people’s pockets as yours are, sacripant /” 

This forcible tuquoque recrimination is in high relish in 
the Caserne ; the screams of mirth redoubled ; Barbe- 
Grise was a redoubtable authority whom the wildest dare- 
devil in his brigade dared not contradict, and he was get- 
ting thu worst of it under the lash of Cigarette’s tongue, 
to the infinite glee of the whole ball-room. 

“ Dam ! — his hands cannot work as mine can I” growled 
her opponent. 

“ Oh, ho 1” cried the little lady, with supreme disdain ; 
“ they don’t twist cocks’ throats and skin rabbits they have 
thieved, perhaps, like yours, but they would wring your 
neck before breakfast to get an appetite, if they could touch 
such canaille .” 

“ Canaille ?” thundered the insulted Barbe-Grise; “Ma 
cantclie! if you were but a man 1” 

“ What would you do to me, brigand ?” screamed Ciga- 
rette, in fits of laughter; “ give me fifty blows of a matraque , 
as your officers gave you last week for stealing his jambon^ 
from the blanc-bec ?” 


* Fawn. f Brandy. % Money. 

I Stick. 1| Gun. f Newly-joined soldier. 


250 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


A growl like a lion from the badgered Barbe-Grise 
shook the walls ; she had cast her mischievous stroke at 
him on a very sore point, the unhappy young conscripts 
rifle having been first dextrously thieved from him, and 
then as dextrously sold to an Arab. 

“ Sacrebleu I” he roared; “you are in love, aw grand 
galop , with this Vanqueur des belles * — this loustic aristo- 
crat /” f 

The only answer to this unbearable insult was a louder 
tumult of laughter ; a crash, a splash, and a volley of oaths 
from Barbe-Grise. Cigarette had launched a bottle of viu 
ordinaire at him, blinded his eyes, and drenched his beard 
with the red torrent and the shower of glass shivers, and 
was back again dancing like a little Bacchante, and sing- 
ing at the top of her sweet lark-like voice — 

Turcos ! Lignards ! 

Bon Zigs ! Truffards ! 

Autour des couscoussou, 

Sont tous mes cliers zou-zous ! 

Roumis 

Spaliis 

Meme les Arbis, 

Joyeux 
Et Bleus, 

Meme les Recrues, 

Ont pour moi 
Quand on boit 
L’air des rois 
L’air des rois ! 

A mon coeur le cliemin 
N’est qu’ par le vin ! 

Le bidon qu’on savoure 
Est le titre & m’ amour! 

With which doggerel declaration of her own mercenary 
and cosmopolitan sentiments chanted in Sabir slang, the 
little Friend of the Flag resumed her wildest bounds’ and 
her most airy fantasias. At the sound of the animated 
altercation, not knowing but what one of his own troopers 
might be the delinquent, he who leaned out of the little case- 
ment moved forward to the doorway of the dancing-room ; 


Conqueror of women. 


t Soldier-fine gentlemuu. 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


251 


he did not guess that it was himself whom she had defended 
against the onslaught of the Zephyr, Barbe-Grise. 

His height rose far above the French soldiers, and above 
most even of the lofty-statured Spahis, and her rapid 
glance flashed over him at once fe “ Did he hear ?” she 
wondered ; the scarlet flush of exercise and excitement 
deepened on her clear brown cheek, that had never blushed 
at the coarsest jests or the broadest love words of the 
barrack-life that had been about her ever since her eyes 
first opened in their infancy to laugh at the sun-gleam on 
a cuirassier's corslet among the baggage-wagons that her 
mother followed. She thought he had not heard ; his face 
was grave, a little weary, and his gaze, as it fell on her, 
was abstracted. 

“Oh-hh 1 Beau BoumiV thought Cigarette, with a flash 
of hot wrath superseding her momentary and most rare 
embarrassment. “You are looking at me and not think- 
ing of me ? We will soon change that 1” 

Such an insult she had never been subjected to, from the 
first day when she had danced for sweetmeats on the top 
of a great drum when she was three years old, in the mid- 
dle of a circular camp of Tirailleurs. It sent fresh nerve 
into her lithe limbs, it made her eyes flash like so much 
fire, it gave her a millionfold more grace, more abandon, 
more heedlessness, more piqued and reckless desinvolture. 
She stamped her tiny, spurred foot petulantly. 

“ Plus vite ! Plus vite !”* she cried ; and as the musician 
obeyed her, she whirled, she spun, she bounded, she seemed 
to live in air, while her soft curls blew off her brow, and 
her white teeth glanced, and her cheeks glowed with a 
carmine glow, and the little gold aiglettes broke across 
her chest with the beating of her heart that throbbed like 
a bird’s heart when it is wild with the first breath of 
Spring. 

She had pitted herself against him ; and she won — so 
far. 

The vivacity, the impetuosity, the antelope elegance, the 
voluptuous repose that now and then broke the ceaseless, 


* “ Quicker ! quicker V 


252 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


sparkling movement of her dancing, caught his eyes, and 
fixed them on her ; it was bewitching, and it bewitched him 
for the moment ; lie watched her as in other days he had 
watched the fantastic witcheries of eastern almb, and the 
ballet charms of opera dancers. 

' This young Bohemian of the Barrack danced in the 
dusky glare and the tavern fumes of the As de Pique to a 
set of soldiers in their shirt-sleeves with their short black 
pipes in their mouths, with as matchless a grace as ever 
the first ballerina* of Europe danced before sovereigns 
and dukes on the boards of Paris, Vienna, or London. 
It was the eastern bamboula of the Harems, to which was 
added all the elastic joyaunce, all the gay brilliancy of the 
blood of France. 

Suddenly she lifted both her hands above her head. 

11 A moi } Roumis /” 

It was the signal well known, the signal of permission 
to join in that wild vertigo for which every one of her spec- 
tators was panting ; their pipes were flung away, their 
kepis tossed off their heads, the music clashed louder and 
faster, and more fiery with every sound, the chorus of 
the Marseillaise des Bataillons thundered from a hundred 
voices — they danced as only men can dance who serve 
under the French flag, and live under the African sun. 
Two, only, still looked on — the Chasseur d’Afrique, and a 
veteran of the 10th company, lamed for life at Mazagran. 

u En la maboull ? Tti ne danses pas — toil” f muttered 
the veteran Zephyr to his silent companion. 

The Chasseur turned and smiled a little. 

“ I prefer a bamboula whose music is the cannon, bon 
pere. ” * 

“ Bravo 1 Yet she is pretty enough to tempt you V 9 

“ Yes ; too pretty to be unsexed by such a life.” 

His thoughts went to a woman he had loved well, a 
young Arab, with eyes like the softness of dark waters, 
who had fallen to him once in a razzia as his share of 
spoil, and for whom he had denied himself cards, or wine, 
or tobacco, or an hour at the Cafe, or anything that ^.IIg- 


* Dancing girls. 

f “Are you a stupid ? Don’t you dance — eh ?” 


CIGARETTE EN BACCHANTE. 


253 


viated the privation and severity of his lot as “ simple 
soldat” which he had been then, that she might have such 
few and slender comforts as he could give her from his mis- 
erable pay. She was dead. Her death had been the dark- 
est passage in his life in Africa — but the flute-like music of 
her voice seemed to come on his ear now. This girl-soldier 
had little charm for him after the sweet, silent, tender grace 
of his lost Zelme. 

He turned and touched on the shoulder a Chasseur 
who had paused a moment to get breath in the headlong 
whirl : 

“ Come, we are to be with the Djied by dawn !” 

The trooper obeyed instantly ; they were ordered to 
visit and remain with a Bedouin camp some thirty miles 
away on the naked plateau ; a camp professedly submis- 
sive, but not so much so but that the Bureau deemed it 
well to profit themselves by the services of the corporal, 
whose knowledge of Arabic, whose friendship with the 
tribes, and whose superior intelligence in all such missions 
rendered him peculiarly fitted for errands that required 
diplomacy and address as well as daring and fire. 

He went thoughtfully out of the noisy, reeking ball- 
room into the warm luster of the Algerian night ; as he 
went, Cigarette, who had been nearer than he knew, 
flashed full in his eyes the fury of her own sparkling ones, 
while with a contemptuous laugh she struck him across the 
lips with the cigar she hurled at him. 

“ Unsexed ? Pouf I If you have a woman’s face, may 
I not have a man’s soul ? It is only a fair exchange. I 
am no kitten, bon zig; take care of my talons !” 

The words were spoken with the fierceness of Africa ; 
she had too much in her of the spirit of the Zephyrs and 
the Chacals, with whom her youth had been spent from her 
cradle up, not to be dangerous when roused ; she was off 
at a bound, and in the midst of the mad whirl again be- 
fore he could attempt to soften or efface the words she had 
overheard, and the last thing he saw of her was in a cloud 
of Zouaves and Spahis with the wild tintamarre* of the 
music shaking riotous echoes from the rafters. 


* Uproar. 
22 


254 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


But when he had passed out of sight, Cigarette shook 
herself free from the dancers with petulant impatience ; 
she was not to be allured by flattery or drawn by entreaty 
back amongst them ; she set her delicate pearly teeth tight, 
and vowed with a reckless, contemptuous, impetuous oath 
that she was tired, that she was sick of them, that she was 
no strolling player to caper for them with a tambourine, 
and with that declaration made her way out alone into the 
little open court under the stars, so cool, so still after the 
heat, and riot, and turbulence within. 

There she dropped on a broad stone step, and leant her 
head on her hand. 

“ Unsexed ! unsexed 1 What did he mean ?” she thought, 
while for the first time, with a vague sense of his meaning, 
tears welled hot and bitter into her sunny eyes, while the 
pained color burned in her face. Those tears were the 
first that she had ever known, and they were cruel ones, 
though they lasted but a little time ; there was too much 
fire in the young Bohemian of the Army not to scorch 
them as they rose. She stamped her foot on the stones 
passionately, and her teeth were set like a little terrier’s as 
she muttered : 

“ Unsexed 1 unsexed ! Bah, M’sieu l’Aristocrat 1 If you 
think so, you shall find your thought right ; you shall find 
Cigarette can hate as men hate, and take her revenge as 
soldiers take theirs !” 


CHAPTER XYII. 

UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR. 

It was just sunset. 

The far-olf summits of the Djurjura were tinted with 
the intense glare the distant pines and cypresses cut sharply 
against the rose-warmed radiance of the sky. On the 
slopes of the hills white cupolas and terraced gardens, 
where the Algerine haouach still showed the taste and lux- 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR. 


255 


nry of Algerine corsairs, rose up among their wild olive 
shadows on the groves of the lentiscus. In the deep gorges 
that were channeled between the riven rocks, the luxu- 
riance of African vegetation ran riot, the feathery crests of 
tossing reeds, the long floating leaves of plants, filling the 
dry water-courses of vanished streams; the broad foliage 
of the wild fig, and the glowing, dainty blossoms of the 
oleander, wherever a trace of brook, or pool, or rivulet let 
it put forth its beautiful coronal, growing one in another 
in the narrow valleys, and the curving passes, wherever 
broken earth or rock gave shelter from the blaze and heat 
of the North African day. 

Farther inland the bare, sear stretches of brown plain 
were studded with the dwarf palm, the vast shadowless 
plateaux were desolate as the great desert itself far beyond ; 
and the sun, as it burned on them a moment in the glory 
of its last glow, found them naked and grand by the sheer 
force of immensity and desolation, but dreary and endless, 
and broken into refts and chasms, as though to make fairer 
by their own barren solitude the laughing luxuriance of 
the sea-face of the Sahel. 

A moment, and the luster of the light flung its own 
magic brilliancy over the Algerine water-line, and then 
shone full on the heights of El Biar and Bouzariah, and 
on the lofty, delicate form of the Italian pines that here 
aud there, Sicilian-like, threw out their graceful heads 
against the amber sun-glow and the deep azure of the 
heavens. Then swiftly, suddenly, the sun sank ; twilight 
passed like a gray gliding shade, an instant, over earth and 
sea; and night, the balmy, sultry, star-studded night of 
Africa, fell over the thirsty leafage longing for its dews, 
the closed flowers that slumbered at its touch, the seared 
and blackened plains to which its coolness could bring no 
herbage, the massive hills that seemed to lie so calmiy in 
its rest. 

Camped on one of the bare stretches above the Musta- 
pha Road was a circle of Arab tents ; the circle was irreg- 
ularly kept, and the Kriimas were scattered at will ; here 
a low one of canvas, there one of goatskin ; here a white 
towering canopy of teleze, there a low striped little nest 
of shelter, and loftier than all, the stately belt el shar of 


256 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the Sheik, with his standard struck into the earth in front 
of it, with its heavy folds hanging listlessly in the sultry, 
breathless air. 

The encampment stretched far over the level arid earth, 
and there was more than one tent where the shadowing 
folds of the banner marked the abode of some noble Djied. 
Disorder reigned supreme, in all the desert freedom ; horses 
and mules, goats and camels, tethered, strayed among the 
conical houses of hair, browsing off the littered straw or 
the tossed-down hay ; and caldrons seethed and hissed 
over wood fires, whose lurid light was flung on the eagle 
features and the white haiks of the wanderers who watched 
the boiling of their mess, or fed the embers with dry sticks. 
Round other fires, having finished the eating of their cous- 
coussou, the Bedouins lay full length, enjoying the solemn 
silence which they love so little to break, and smoking 
their long pipes, while through Die shadows about them 
glided the lofty figures of their brethren, with the folds ol 
their sweeping burnous floating in the gloom. It was a 
picture, Rambrandt in color, Oriental in composition, with 
the darkness surrounding it stretching out into endless dis- 
tance that led to the mystic silence of the great desert, and 
above the intense blue of the gorgeous night, with the 
stars burning through white transparent mists of slowly 
drifting clouds. 

In the central tent, tall and crimson striped, with its 
mighty standard reared in front, and its opening free to the 
night, sat the Khalifa, the head of the tribe, with a circle 
of Arabs about him. He was thrown on his cushions, 
rich enough for a seraglio, while the rest squatted on the 
morocco carpet that covered the bare ground, and that 
was strewn with round brass Moorish trays, and little cups 
emptied of their coffee. The sides of the tent were hung 
with guns and swords, lavishly adorned, and in the middle 
stood a tali Turkish candle-branch in fretted work, whose 
light struggled with the white flood of the moon, and the 
ruddy, fitful glare from a wood fire without. 

Beneath its light, which fell full on him, flung down 
upon another pile of cushions facing the open front of the 
tent, was a guest whom the Khalifa delighted to honor. 
Only a Corporal of Chasseurs, and once a foe, yet one with 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF nAlR. 


257 


whom the Arab found the brotherhood of brave men, and 
on whom he lavished, in all he could, the hospitalities and 
honors of the desert. 

The story of their friendship ran thus : 

The tribe was now allied with France, or, at least, had 
accepted French sovereignty, and pledged itself to neu- 
trality in the hostilities still rife ; but a few years before, 
far in the interior and leagued with the Kabailes, it had 
been one of the fiercest and most dangerous among the 
enemies of France. At that time the Khalifa and the 
Chasseur met in many a skirmish ; hot, desperate strug- 
gles, where men fought horse to horse, hand to hand ; 
midnight frays, when, in the heart of lonely ravines, Arab 
ambuscades fell on squadrons of French cavalry; terrible 
chases through the heat of torrid suns, when the glitter- 
ing ranks of the charging troops swept down after the 
Bedouins* flight; fiery combats, when the desert sand and 
the smoke of musketry circled in clouds above the close- 
locked struggle, and the Leopard of France and the Lion 
of Sahara wrestled in a death- grip. 

In these, through four or five seasons of warfare, the 
Sheik and the Chasseur had encountered each other, till 
each had grown to look for the other’s face as soon as the 
standards of the Bedouins flashed in the sunshine opposite 
the guidons of the Imperial forces ; till each had watched 
and noted the other’s unmatched prowess, and borne away 
the wounds of the other’s home strokes, with the admira- 
tion of a bold soldier for a bold rival’s dauntlessness and 
skill ; till each had learned to long for an hour, hitherto 
always prevented by waves of battle that had swept them 
too soon asunder, when they should meet in a duello once 
for all, and try their strength together till one bore off 
victory and one succumbed to death. 

At last it came to pass that after a lengthened term of 
this chivalrous antagonism, the tribe were sorely pressed 
by the French troops, and could no longer mass its fear- 
less front to face them, but had to flee southward to the 
desert, and encumbered by its flocks and its women, was 
hardly driven and greatly decimated. Now among those 
women was one whom the Sheik held above all earthly 
things except his honor in war,' a beautiful antelope-eyed 
r 22* 


258 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


croat? ire, lithe and graceful as a palm, and the daughter 
of a pure Arab race, on whom he could not endure for any 
other sight than his own to look, and whom he guarded in 
his tent as the chief pearl of all his treasures ; herd^ 
flocks, arms, even his horses, all save the honor of his tribe, 
he would have surrendered rather than surrender Djelma. 
It was a passion with him ; a passion that not even the iron 
of his temper and the dignity of his austere calm could abate 
or conceal ; and the rumor of it and of the beauty of its 
object reached the French camp, till an impatient curiosity 
was roused about her, and a raid that should bear her off 
became the favorite speculation round the picket fires at 
night, and the scorching noons, when the men lay stripped 
to their waist, panting like tired dogs under the hot, with- 
ering breath that stole to them from sweeping over the 
yellow seas of sand. 

Their heated fancies had pictured this treasure of the 
great Djied as something beyond all that her sex had ever 
given them, and to snare her in some unwary moment was 
the chief thought of Zephyr and Spahis when they went 
out on a scouting or foraging party. But it was easier said 
than done; the eyes of no Frank ever fell on her, and 
when he was most closely driven the Khalifa Ilderim aban- 
doned his cattle and sheep, but with the females of the tribe 
still safely guarded, fell more and more backward and south- 
ward, drawing the French on and on farther and farther 
across the plains in the sickliest times of hottest drought. 

Reinforcements could swell the Imperial ranks as swiftly 
as they were thinned, but with the Arabs a man once fallen 
was a man the less to their numbers forever, and the 
lightning-like pursuit began to tell terribly on them ; their 
herds had fallen into their pursuers’ hands, and famine 
menaced them. Nevertheless, they were fierce in attack 
as tigers, rapid in swoop as vultures, and fought flying in 
such fashion that the cavalry lost more in this fruitless, 
worthless work, than they would have done in a second 
Holienlinden or Austerlitz. 

Moreover, the heat was intense, water was bad and very 
rare, dysentery came with the scorch and the toil of this 
endless charge ; the chief in command, M. le Marquis de 
Chateauroy, swore heavily as he saw many of bis best men 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR. 


259 


dropping off like sheep in a murrain, and he offered two 
hundred napoleons to whosoever should bring either the 
dead Sheik’s head or the living beauty of Djelma. 

One day the Chasseurs had pitched their camp where a 
few barren, withered trees gave a semblance of shelter, 
and a little thread of brackish water oozed through the 
yellow earth. 

It was high noon ; the African sun was at its fiercest; 
far as the eye could reach there was only one boundless, 
burning, unendurable glitter of parching sand and cloud- 
less sky, brazen beneath, brazen above, till the desert and 
the heavens touched, and blent in one tawny fiery glow 
in the measureless distance. The men lay under canvas, 
dead beat, half naked, without the power to do anything 
except to fight like thirst-maddened dogs for a draught at 
the shallow stream that they and their breathless horses 
soon drained dry. 

Even Raoul de Chateauroy, though his frame was like 
an Arab’s, and knit into Arab endurance, was stretched 
like a great bloodhound, chained by the sultry oppression. 
He was ruthless, inflexible, a tyrant to the core, and sharp 
and swift as steel in his rigor, but he was a fine soldier, and 
never spared himself any of the hardships that his regi- 
ment had to endure under him. 

Suddenly the noon lethargy of the camp was broken ; a 
trumpet-call rang through the stillness ; against the amber 
transparency of the horizon line the outlines of half-a- 
dozen horsemen were seen looming nearer and nearer with 
every moment ; they were some Spahis who had been out 
“ sondant le terrain aux environs”* The mighty frame 
of Chateauroy, almost as unclothed as an athlete, started 
from its slumbrous, panting rest ; his eyes lightened hun- 
grily ; he muttered a fiery oath : “ Mort de Dieu ! — they 
have the woman !” 

They had the woman. She had been netted near a 
water-spring, to which she had wandered too loosely 
guarded, and too far from the Bedouin encampment. The 
delight of the haughty Sidi’s eyes was borne off to tho 


* Sweeping the country for food. 


260 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


tents of his foes, and the Colonel’s face flashed darkly with 
an eager, lustful warmth, as he looked upon his captive. 
Rumor had not outboasted the Arab girl’s beauty; it was 
lustrous as ever was that when, far yonder to the eastward, 
under the curled palms of Nile, the sorceress of the Cae- 
sars swept through her rose-strewn palace-chambers. Only 
Djelma was as innocent as the gazelle, whose grace she 
resembled, and loved her lord with a great love. 

Of her suffering her captor took no more heed than if 
she were a young bird dying of shot wounds ; but, with 
one triumphant, admiring^ glance at her, he wrote a mes- 
sage in Arabic, to send to the Khalifa, ere her loss was 
discovered — a message more cruel than iron. He hesi- 
tated a second, where he lay at the opening of his tent, 
W’hom he should send with it. His men were almost all 
half dead with the sun-blaze. His glance chanced to light 
in the distance on a soldier to whom he bore no love — 
causelessly, but bitterly all the same. He had him sum- 
moned, and eyed him with a curious amusement : — Chateau- 
roy treated his squadrons with much the same sans-fagon 
familiarity and brutality that a chief of filibusters uses to 
his. 

“Sol you heed the heat so little, you give up your turn 
of water to a drummer, they say ?” 

The Chasseur gave the salute with a calm deference. 
A faint-flush passed over the sun-bronze of his forehead. 
He had thought the Sydney-like sacrifice had been unob- 
served. 

“ The drummer was but a child, mon Commandant .” 

“ Be so good as to give us no more of those melodra- 
matic acts 1” said M. le Marquis contemptuously. “You 
are too fond of trafficking in those showy fooleries. You 
bribe your comrades for their favoritism too openly. 
Yentre-bleu ! I forbid it — do you hear ?” 

“I hear, mon Colonel .” 

The assent was perfectly tranquil arid respectful. He 
was too good a soldier not to render perfect obedience, and 
keep perfect silence, under any goad of provocation to 
break both. 

“ Obey, then 1” said Chateauroy savagely. “ Well, since 
you love heat so well, you shall take a flag of truce and 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF nAIR. 201 

my scroll to the Sidi Ilderim. But tell me, first, what 
do you think of this capture ?” 

“ It is not my place to give opinions, M. le Colonel.” 

“ Pardieu ! it is your place when I bid you. Speak, or 
I will have the matraque cut the words out of you 1” 

“ I may speak frankly ?” 

“Ten thousand curses — yes !” 

“Then, I think that those who make war on women are 
no longer fit to fight with men.” 

For a moment the long, sinewy, massive form of Chateau- 
roy started from the skins on which he lay at full length, like 
a lion starting from its lair. His veins swelled like black 
cords ; under the mighty muscle of his bare chest his heart 
beat visibly in the fury of his wrath. 

“ By God 1 I have a mind to have you shot like a 
dog !” 

The Chasseur looked at him carelessly, composedly, but 
with a serene deference still, as due from a soldier to his 
chief. 

“ You have threatened it before, M. le Colonel. It 
may be as well to do it, or the army may think you capri- 
cious.” 

Raoul de Chateauroy crushed a blasphemous oath 
through his clinched teeth, and laughed a certain short, 
stern, sardonic laugh, which his men dreaded more than 
his wrath. 

“ No ; I will send you instead to the Khalifa. lie often 
saves me the trouble of killing my own curs. Take a flag 
of truce and this paper, and never draw rein till ybu reach 
him, if your beast drop dead at the end.” 

The Chasseur saluted, took the paper, bowed with a 
certain languid, easy grace that camp life never cured 
him of, and went. He knew that the man who should 
take the news of his treasure’s loss to the Emir Ilderim 
would, a thousand to one, perish by every torture desert 
cruelty could frame, despite the cover of the white banner. 

Chdteauroy looked after him, as he and his horse passed 
from the French camp in the full burning tide of noon. 

“ If the Arabs kill him,” he thought, “ I will forgive II- 
derira five seasons of rebellion.” 

The Chasseur, as he had been bidden, never drew rein 


262 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


across the scorching plateau. ITe rode to what he knew 
was like enough to be death, and death by many a tor- 
ment, as though he rode to a midnight love-tryst. His 
horse was of Arab breed — young, fleet, and able to endure 
extraordinary pressure, both of spur and of heat. lie 
swept on, far and fast, through the sickly, lurid glitter of 
the day, over the loose sand, that flew in puffs around him 
as the hoofs struck it flying right and left. At last, ere 
he reached the Bedouin tents, that were still but slender 
black points against the horizon, he saw the Sheik and a 
party of horsemen returning from a foraging quest, and in 
ignorance as yet of the abduction of Djelma. He gal- 
loped straight to them, and halted across their line of 
march, with the folds of the little white flag fluttering in 
the sun. The Bedouins drew bridle, and Ilderim advanced 
alone. He was a magnificent man, of middle age, with 
the noblest type of the eagle-eyed, aquiline desert beauty. 
He was a superb specimen of his race, without the lean, 
withered, rapacious, vulture look which often mars it. His 
white haik floated round limbs fit for a Colossus ; and under 
the snowy folds of his turban the olive-bronze of his bold 
forehead, the sweep of his jet black beard, and the piercing 
luminance of his eyes had a grand and kingly majesty. 

A glance of recognition flashed from him on the Lascar, 
who had so often crossed swords with him ; and he waved 
back the scroll with dignified courtesy. 

“ Bead it me.” 

It was read. Bitterly, blackly, shameful, the few brutal 
words were. They netted him as an eagle is netted in a 
shepherd’s trap. 

The moment that he gave a sign of advancing against 
his ravishers, the captive’s life would pay the penalty; if 
he merely remained in arms, without direct attack, she 
would be made the Marquis’s mistress, and abandoned 
later to the army. The only terms on which he could 
have her restored were instant submission to the impe- 
rial rule, and personal homage of himself and all his 
Djouad to the Marquis as the representative of France — 
homage in which they should confess themselves dogs and 
the sons of dogs. 

So ran the message of peace. 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR. 


263 


The Chasseur read on to the end calmly. Then he lifted 
his gaze, and looked at the Emir; — he expected fifty 
swords to be buried in his heart. 

As he gazed, he thought no more of his own doom ; he 
thought only of the revelation before him, of what passion 
and what agony could be — things unknown in the world 
where the chief portion of his life had passed. He was 
a war-hardened campaigner, trained in the ruthless school 
of African hostilities, who had seen every shape of mental 
and physical suffering, when men were left to perish of 
gun-wounds, as the rush of the charge swept on p when 
writhing horses died by the score of famine and of thirst; 
when the firebrand was hurled among sleeping encamp- 
ments, and defenseless women were torn from their rest by 
the unsparing hands of pitiless soldiers. But the torture 
which shook for a second the steel-knit frame of this Arab 
passed all that he had dreamed as possible ; it was mute, 
and held in bonds of iron, for the sake of the desert pride 
of a great ruler’s majesty ; but it spoke more than any elo- 
quence ever spoke yet on earth. 

With a wild, shrill yell, the Bedouins whirled their 
naked sabers above their heads, and rushed down on the 
bearer of this shame to their chief and their tribe. The 
Chasseur did not seek to defend himself. He sat motion- 
less. He thought the vengeance just. 

The Sheik raised his sword, and signed them back, as he 
pointed to the white folds of the flag. Then his voice 
rolled out like thunder over the stillness of the plains : — 

“But that you trust yourself to my honor, I would rend 
you limb from limb. Go back to the tiger who rules you, 
and tell him that — as Allah liveth — I will fall on him and 
smite him as he hath never been smitten. Dead or living, 
I will have back my own. If he take her life, I will have 
ten thousand lives to answer it; if he deal her dishonor, I 
will light such a holy war through the length and breadth 
of the land that his nation shall be driven backward 
like choked dogs into the sea, and perish from the face 
of the earth for evermore. And this I swear by the Law 
and the Prophet 1” 

The menace rolled out, imperious as a monarch’s, thrill- 
ing through the desert hush. The Chasseur bent his head, 


2G4 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


as the words closed. His own teeth were tightly clinched, 
and his face was dark. 

“ Emir, listen to one word,” he said briefly. “Shame 
has been done to me as to you. Had I been told what 
words I bore, they had never been brought by my hand. 
You know me. You have had the marks of my steel, as 
I have had the marks of yours. Trust me in this, Sidi. 
I pledge you my honor that, before the sun sets, she shall 
be given back to you unharmed, or I will return here myself, 
and your tribe shall slay me in what fashion they will. So 
alone can she be saved uninjured. Answer, will you have 
faith in me 

The desert chief looked at him long ; sitting motionless 
as a statue on his stallion, with the fierce gleam of his 
eyes fixed on the eyes of the man who so long had been his 
foe in contests whose chivalry equaled their daring. The 
Chasseur never wavered once under the set, piercing, 
ruthless gaze. 

Then the Emir pointed to the sun, that was now at its 
zenith : 

“You are a great warrior: such men do not lie. Go, 
and if she be borne to me before the sun is half-way sunk 
toward the west, all the branches of the tribes of Ilderim 
shall be as your brethren, and bend as steel to your bid- 
ding. If not — as God is mighty — not one man in all your 
host shall live to tell the tale 1” 

The Chasseur bowed his head to his horse’s mane ; then, 
without a word, wheeled round, and sped back across the 
plain. 

When he reached his own cavalry camp, he went straight- 
way to his chief. What passed between them none ever 
knew. The interview was brief : it was possibly as stormy. 
Pregnant and decisive it assuredly was ; and the squadrons 
of Africa marveled that the man who dared beard Raoul 
de Chateauroy in his lair came forth with his life. What- 
ever the spell he used, the result was a marvel. 

At the very moment that the sun touched the lower half 
of the western heavens, the Sheik Ilderim, where he sat 
in his saddle, with all his tribe stretching behind him, full 
armed, to sweep down like falcons on the spoilers, if 
the hour passed with the pledge unredeemed, saw tho 


UNDER THE HOUSES OP HAIR. 


265 


form of the Chasseur reappear between his' sight and 
the glare of the skies ; nor did he ride alone. That night 
the Pearl of the Desert lay once more in the mighty, sinu- 
ous arms of the great Emir. 

But, with the dawn, his vengeance fell in terrible fashion 
on the sleeping camp of the Pranks ; and from that hour 
dated the passionate, savage, unconcealed hate of Raoul 
de Chateauroy to the most daring soldier of all his fiery 
Horse, known in his troop as “ Bel-a-faire-peure.” 

It was in the tent of Ilderim now that he reclined, look- 
ing outward at the night where flames were leaping ruddily 
under a large caldron, and far beyond was the dark im- 
mensity of the star-studded sky; the light of the moon 
strayed in and fell on the chestnut waves of his beard, out 
of which the long amber stem of an Arab pipe glittered 
like a golden line, and on the delicate, feminine cast of his 
profile, which, with the fairness of the skin — fair despite a 
warm hue of bronze — and the long slumbrous softu^s of 
the hazel eyes, were in so marked a contrast of race with 
the eagle outlines of the Bedouins around. 

From the hour of the restoration of his treasure the 
Sheik had been true to his oath ; his tribe in all its branches 
had held the French lascar in closest brotherhood ; when- 
ever they were he was honored and welcomed; was he in 
war, their swords were drawn for him ; was he in need, 
their houses of hair were spread for him ; had he want of 
flight, the swiftest and most precious of their horses was 
at his service ; had he thirst, they would have died them- 
selves, wringing out the last drop from the water-skin for 
him. Through him their alliance, or more justly to speak, 
their neutrality, was secured to France, and the Bedouin 
Chief loved him with a great, silent, noble love that was 
fast rooted in the granite of his nature. Between them 
there was a brotherhood that beat down the antagonism of 
race, and was stronger than the instinctive hate of the op- 
pressed for all who came under the abhorred standard of 
the usurpers. He liked the Arabs, and they liked him ; a 
grave courtesy, a preference for the fewest words and least 
demonstration possible, a marked opinion that silence was 
golden, and that speech was at best only silver- washed metal, 
an instinctive dread of all discovery of emotion, and a limit- 

23 


266 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


less power of resisting and suppressing suffering, were 
qualities the nomads of the desert and the lion of the 
Chasseurs d’Afrique had in common ; as they had in unison 
a wild passion for war, a dauntless zest in danger, and a 
love for the hottest heat of fiercest battle. 

Silence reigned in the tent, beyond whose first division, 
screened by a heavy curtain of goat’s hair, the beautiful 
young' Ejelmar played with her only son, a child of three 
or four summers ; the Sheik lay mute, the Djouad and 
Marabouts around never spoke in his presence unless their 
lord bade them, and the Chasseur was stretched motion- 
less, his elbow resting on a cushion of Morocco fabric, and 
his eyes looking outward at the restless, changing move- 
ment of the firelit, starlit camp. 

After the noise, the mirth, the riotous songs, and the 
gay, elastic good humor of his French comrades, the si- 
lence and the calm of the Emir’s “house of hair” were, 
welcome to him. He never spoke much himself ; of a 
truth, his gentle, immutable laconism was the only charge 
that his Chambree ever brought against him. That a man 
could be so brief in words, while yet so soft in manner, 
seemed a thing out of all nature to the vivacious French- 
men ; that unchanging stillness and serenity in one who 
was such a reckless, resistless croc-mitaine , swift as fire in 
the field, was an enigma that the Cavalerie and the Demi- 
cavalerie of Algeria never solved. His corps would have 
gone after him to the devil, as Claude de Chanrellon had 
averred ; but they would sometimes wax a little impatient 
that he would never grow communicative or thread many 
phrases together, even over’ the best wine which ever 
warmed the hearts of its drinkers or loosened all rein 
from their lips. 

“I wish I had come straight to you, Sidi, when I first 
set foot in Africa,” he said at last, while the fragrant 
smoke uncurled from under the droop of his long pendant 
moustaches. 

“Truly it had been well,” answered the Khalifa, who 
would have given the best stallions in his stud to have had 
this Frank with him in warfare, and in peace, “there is no 
life like our life.” 

“Faith! I think not,” murmured the Chasseur, rather 


UNDER THE HOUSES OP IIAIR. 


2G7 


to himself than the Bedouin. “The desert Keeps you 
and your horse, and you can let all the rest of the world 
1 slide.’ ” 

“ But we are murderers and pillagers, say your nations,” 
resumed the Emir, with the shadow of a sardonic smile 
flickering an instant over the sternness and composure of 
his features. “ To rifle a caravan is a crime, though to 
steal a continent is glory.” 

Bel-ii-faire-peur laughed slightly. 

“ Do not tempt me to rebel against my adopted flag.” 

The Sheik looked at him in silence ; the French soldiers 
had spent twelve years in the ceaseless exertions of an 
amused inquisitiveness to discover the antecedents of their 
volunteer ; the Arabs with their loftier instincts of courtesy 
had never hinted to him a question of whence or why he had 
come upon African soil. 

“ I never thought at all in those days, else, had I 
thought twice, I should not have gone to your eiiemies,” 
he answered as he lazily watched the Bedouins without 
squat on their heels round the huge brass bowls of cous- 
coussou, which they kneaded into round lumps and pitched 
between their open bearded lips in their customary form of 
supper. “ Not but what our Roumis are brave fellows 
enough ; better comrades no man could want.” 

The Khalifa took the long pipe from his mouth and 
spoke ; his slow sonorous accents falling melodiously on the 
silence in the lingua sapir of the France-Arab tongue. 

“ Your comrades are gallant men ; they are lascars 
kebirs* and fearless foes ; against such my voice is never 
lifted, however my sword may cross with them. But the 
locust-swarms that devour the land are the money-eaters, 
the petty despots, the bribe-takers, the men who wring 
gold out of infamy, who traffic in tyrannies, who plunder 
under official seals, who curse Algiers with avarice, with 
fraud, with routine, with the hell-spawn of civilization. It 
is the ‘ Bureaucratie ’ as your tongue phrases it, that is the 
spoiler and the oppressor of the soil. But, — Inshallah ! 
we endure only for awhile. A little, and the shame of the 


* Great warriors. 


2G8 


UNDER TWO FLAQS. 


invaders tread will be washed out in blood. Allah is great, 
we can wait*” 

And with Moslem patience that the fiery gloom of his 
burning eyes belied, the Djied stretched himself once more 
into immovable and silent rest. 

The Chasseur answered nothing ; his sympathies were 
heartfelt with the Arabs, his allegiance and his esprit du 
corps were with the service in which he was enrolled. lie 
could not defend French usurpation ; but neither could he 
condemn the Flag that had now become his Flag, and in 
which he had grown to feel much of national honor, to take 
much of national pride. 

“They will never really win again, I am afraid,” he 
thought as his eyes followed the wraith-like flash of the 
white burnous, as the Bedouins glided to and fro in the 
chiar’oscuro of the encampment, now in the flicker of the 
flame, now in the silvered luster of the moon. “ It is the 
conflict of the races, as the cant runs, and their day is done. 
It is a bolder, freer, simpler type than anything we get in 
the world yonder. Shall we ever drift back to it in the 
future, I wonder?” 

The speculation did not stay with him long; Semitic, 
Latin, or Teuton race was very much the same to him, 
and intellectual subtleties had not much attraction at any 
time for the most brilliant soldier in the French cavalry; 
he preferred the ring of the trumpets, the glitter of the 
sun’s play along the line of steel as his regiment formed in 
line on the eve of a life-and-death struggle, the wild breath- 
less sweep of a midnight gallop over the brown swelling 
plateau under the light of the stars, or, — in some brief in- 
terval of indolence, and razzia-won wealth, — the gleam of 
fair eyes and the flush of sparkling sherbet when some 
passionate darkling glance beamed on him from some 
Arab mistress whose scarlet lips murmured to him 
through the drowsy hush of an Algerine night the sense 
if not the song of Pelagia, 

Life is so short at best! 

Take -while thou canst thy rest, 

Sleeping by me! 

His thoughts drifted back over many varied scenes and 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF HAIR. 


2 C9 


changing memories of his service in Algiers, as he lay 
there at the entrance of the Sheik’s tent, with the night of 
looming shadow, and reddened -firelight, and picturesque 
movement before him. Hours of reckless headlong delight, 
when men grew drunk with bloodshed as with wine; hours 
of horrible, unsuccored suffering, when the desert thirst 
had burned in his throat, and the jagged lances been 
broken off at the hilt in his flesh, while above head the 
carrion birds wheeled, waiting their meal ; hours of un- 
ceasing, unsparing slaughter, when the word was given to 
slay and yield no mercy, where in the great, vaulted, 
cavernous gloom of rent rocks, the doomed were hemmed 
as close as sheep in shambles. Hours, in the warm flush 
of an African dawn, when the arbiter of the duel was the 
sole judge allowed or comprehended by the tigers of the 
tricolor, and to aim a dead shot or to receive one was the 
only alternative left, as the challenging eyes of “Zephir” 
or “ Chasse-Marais” flashed death across the barriere, in 
a combat where only one might live, though the root of 
the quarrel had been nothing more than a toss too much 
of brandy, a puff of tobacco smoke construed into insult, 
or a fille de joie’s maliciously cast firebrand of taunt or 
laugh. Hours of severe discipline, of relentless routine, 
of bitter deprivation, of campaigns hard as steel in the 
endurance they needed, in the miseries they entailed; of 
military subjection, stern and unbending, a yoke of iron 
that a personal and pitiless tyranny weighted with perse- 
cution that was scarce less than hatred; of an implicit 
obedience that required every instinct of liberty, every 
habit of early life, every impulse of pride, and manhood, 
and freedom, to be choked down like crimes, and buried 
as though they had never been. Hours again, that repaid 
these in full, when the long line of Horse swept out to the 
attack, with the sun on the points of their weapons ; when 
the wheeling clouds of Arab rid^s poured like the clouds 
of the simoom on a thinned, devoted troop that rallied and 
fought as hawks fight herons, and saved the day as the 
sky was flushed with that day’s decline ; when some soft- 
eyed captive, with limbs of free mountain grace, and the 
warm veins flushing under the clear olive of her cheeks, 
was first wild as a young fettered falcon, and then, like the 
23* 


270 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


falcon, quickly learned to tremble at a touch, and grow 
tame under a caress, and love nothing so well as the hand 
that had captured her. Hours of all the chanceful fortunes 
of a soldier’s life, in hill-wars and desert raids, passed in 
memory through his thoughts now where he was stretched, 
looking dreamily through the film of his chibouque smoke 
at the city of tents, and the couchant forms of camels, and 
the tall, white, slowly moving shapes of the lawless ma- 
rauders of the sand plains. 

“Is my life worth much more under the French Flag 
than it was under the English ?” thought the Chasseur, 
with a certain careless, indifferent irony on himself, natural 
to him. “ There I killed time — here I kill men. Which is 
the better pursuit, I wonder? The world would rather 
economize the first commodity than the last, I believe. 
Perhaps, it don’t make an overgood use of either.” 

His thoughts did not stay long with that theme. He 
was no moralist and no philosopher, though he practiced, 
without ever knowing it, a philosophy of the highest and 
simplest kind with every day that found him in the ranks 
of the Algerian army, and had found thought grow on him, 
in a grave if a desultory fashion, many a time when he had 
ridden alone through defiles that, for aught he knew, might 
harbor death with every step, or sat the only wakeful watcher 
beside a bivouac fire, while his comrades slept around him, 
and the roar of angry beasts rolled upward from the ravines, 
or paced to and fro in solitude on patrol duty, with a yawn- 
ing mountain pass, or a limitless night-veiled plain before 
him in the light of the moon. He was more silent and 
more meditative than seemed in keeping with a wild lion 
of the Chasseurs, whose daring out-dared all the fire-eaters, 
and whose negligent devilry had become a password all 
over Africa, till “ quel p’tit verre a bu Bel-iVfaire-peur ?” 
(alias, “what special exploit has he done to-day?”) became 
the question put after ev$ry skirmish or expedition. Bui 
he was much more of a soldier than a thinker at any time, 
and, instead of following out the problem of the world’s 
uses of its two raw materials, time and men, he found a 
subject more congenial in the discussion of stable science 
with the Emir. 

To him the austere chief would unbend ; with him the 


UNDER THE HOUSES OF nAIR. 


271 


thin, compressed lips of the Arab would grow eloquent 
with an impressive oratory; for him all the bonds of hos 
pitality would grow closer and warmer. Ilderim might be 
a pillager, with a sure swoop and a merciless steel, as the 
officials of imperial government wrote him out ; of a truth, 
caravanserais had felt the tear of his talons, and battalions 
staggered under the blows of his beak; but he had two 
desert virtues that are obsolete in the civilized world ; he 
had gratitude and he had sincerity. Of course he was but 
a nomad, a barbarian, a robber, and a ruler of robbers; of 
course he was but a half-savage Ishmaelite, or he would 
long have abandoned them. 

The night was someway spent when the talk of wild- 
pigeon-blue mares and sorrel stallions closed between the 
Djied and his guest; and the French soldier, who had been 
sent hither from the Bureau Arabe with another of his 
comrades, took his way through the now still camp where 
the cattle were sleeping, and the fires were burning out, 
and the banner-folds hung motionless in the luster of the 
stars, to the black and white tent prepared for him. A 
spacious one, close to the chief’s, and given such luxury in 
the shape of ornamented weapons, thick carpets, and soft 
cushions, as the tribe’s resources, drawn from many a raid 
on travelers far south, could bring together to testify their 
hospitality. 

As he opened the folds and entered, his fellow-soldier, 
who was lying on his back, with his heels much higher than 
his head, and a short pipe in his teeth, tumbled himself up 
with a rapid summersault, and stood bolt upri ght, giving 
the salute; a short, sturdy little man, with a skin burnt 
like a coffee-berry, that was in odd contrast with his light 
dancing blue eyes, and his close matted curls of yellow hair. 

“Beg pardon, sir! I was half asleep 1” 

The Chasseur laughed a little. 

“Don't talk English ; somebody will hear you one day.” 

“ What’s the odds if they do, sir ?” responded the qjher. 
“ It relieves one’s feelins a little. All of ’em know I’m 
English, but never a one of ’em knew what you are. The 
name you was enrolled by won’t really tell ’em nothing. 
They guess it ain’t yours. That cute little chap, Tata, he 
says to me yesterday, ‘you’re always a treatin’ of youf 


272 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


galonn6 like as if he was a prince.’ ‘Dammed’ eays I, 
‘ I’d like to see the prince as would hold a candle to him.’ 
‘You’re right there,’ says the little ’un. ‘ There ain’t his 
equal for takin’ off a beggar’s head with a back sweep.’ ” 

The Corporal laughed a little again, as he tossed himself 
down on the carpet. 

“Well, it’s something to have one virtue! But have a 
care what those chatter-boxes get out of you.” 

“ Lord, sir. Ain’t I been a takin’ care these ten years ? 
It comes quite natural now. I couldn’t keep my tongue 
still; that wouldn’t be in anyways possible. So I’ve let 
it run on oiled wheels on a thousand rum tracks and doub- 
lings. I’ve told ’em such a lot of amazin’ stories about 
where we kem from, that they’ve got half a million differ- 
ent styles to choose out of. Some thinks as how you’re a 
Polish nob, what got into hot water with the Russians; 
some as how you’re a Italian prince what was cleaned out 
like Parma and them was ; some as how you’re a Austrian 
Archduke that have cut your country because you was iu 
love with the Empress, and had a duel about her that scan- 
dalized the whole empire ; some as how you’re a exiled 
Spanish grandee a’ come to learn tactics and that like, that 
you may go back, and pitch O’Donnell into the middle of 
next week, whenever you see a chance to cut in and try 
conclusions with him. Bless you, sir 1 you may let me 
alone for bamboozlin’ of anybody 1” 

The Corporal laughed again, as he began to unharness 
himself. There was in him a certain mingling of insou- 
ciance and melancholy, each of which alternately predom- 
inated; the former his by nature, the latter born of cir- 
cumstance. 

“If you can outwit our friends the Zephyrs, and the 
Loustics, and the Indigenes, you have reached a height of 
diplomacy indeed ! I would not engage to do it myself. 
Take my word for it, ingenuity is always dangerous — silence 
is always safe.” 

“ That maybe, sir,” responded the Chasseur, iu the sturdy 
English with which his bright blue eyes danced a fitting 
nationality. “No doubt it’s uncommon good for them as 
can bring their minds to it — -just like water instead o’ wine 
—but it’s very tryin’ like the teetotalism. You might as 


UNDER, THE HOUSES OP nAIR. 273 

well tell a Newfoundland not to love a splash as me not to 
love a chatter. I’d cut my tongue out sooner than say 
never a word that you don’t wish — but say somethin ’ I 
must, or die for it.” 

With which the speaker, known to Algerian fame by 
the soubriquet of Crache-aa-nez-d’la-Mort, from the hair- 
breadth escapes and reckless razzias from which he had 
come out without a scratch, dropped on his knees, and 
began to take oif the trappings of his fellow-soldier, with 
as reverential a service as though he were a lord of the 
bedchamber serving a Louis Quatorze. The other mo- 
tioned him gently away. 

“No, no. I have told you a thousand times we are com- 
rades and equals now.” 

“And I’ve told you a thousand times, sir, that we aren't, 
and never will be, and don’t oughtn’t to be,” replied the 
soldier, doggedly, drawing off the spurred and dust-covered 
boots. “A gentleman’s a gentleman, let alone what straits 
he fall into.” 

“ But ceases to be one as soon as he takes a service he 
cannot requite, or claims a superiority he does not possess. 
We have been fellow-soldiers for twelve years ” 

“ So we have, sir; but we are what we always was, and 
always will be — one a gentleman, t’other a scamp. If you 
think so be as I’ve done a good thing side by side with 
you now and then in the fightin’, give me my own way 
and let me wait on you when I can. I can’t do much on 
it when those other fellows’ eyes is on us ; but here I can 
and I will — beggin’ your pardon — so there’s an end of it. 
One may speak plain in this place with nothing but them 
Arabs about; and all the army know well enough, sir, that 
if it weren’t for that black devil, Ch&teauroy, you’d have 
had your officer’s commission and your troop too long 
before now ” 

“ Oh no. There are scores of men in the ranks merit 
promotion better far than I do. And, — leave the Colonel’s 
name alone. He is our chief, whatever else he be.” 

The words were calm and careless, but they carried a 
weight with them that was not to be disputed ; “ Crache- 
au-nez-d’la-Mort” hung his head a little and went on un- 
harnessing his Corporal in silence, contenting himself with 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


274 

muttering in his throat that it was true for all that, aud 
the whole regiment knew it. 

11 You are happy enough in Algeria — eh ?” asked the one 
he served, as he stretched himself on the skins and carpets, 
and drank down a sherbet that his self-attached attendant 
had made with a skill learned from a pretty cantiniere, who 
had given him the lesson in return for a slashing blow with 
which he had struck down two “ Riz-pain-sels,” who as the 
best paid men in the army had tried to cheat her in the 
price of her Cognac. 

“ 1, sir ? Never was so happy in my life, sir. I’d be 
discontented indeed if I wasn’t. Always some spicy bit of 
fighting. If there aren’t a fantasia, as they call it, in the 
field, there’s always somebody to pot in a small way ; and 
if you’re lying by in barracks there’s always a scrimmage 
hot as pepper to be got up with fellows that love the row 
just as well as you do. It’s life, that’s where it is; it ain’t 
rustin’.” 

“ Then you prefer the French service ?” 

“ Right and away, sir. You see this is how it is,” and 
the redoubtable yellow-haired “ Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort” 
paused in the vigorous cleansing and brushing he was be- 
stowing on his Corporal’s uniform and stood at ease in his 
shirt and trowsers, with his eloquence no way impeded by 
the brule-gueule that was always between his teeth. “ Over 
there in England, you know, sir, pipe-clay is the deuce- 
and-all ; you’ve always got to have the stock on, and look 
as stiff as a stake, or it’s all up with you ; you’re that tor- 
mented about little things that you get riled and kick the 
traces before the great ’uns come to try you. There’s a 
lot of lads would be game as game could be in battle, ay, 
and good lads to boot, doing their duty right as a trivet 
when it came to anything like war, that are clean druv’ 
out of the service in time o’ peace, along with all them 
petty persecutions that worry a man’s skin like mosquito- 
bites. Now here they know that, and Lord 1 what soldiers 
they do make through knowing of it! It’s tight enough and 
stern enough in big things ; martial law sharp enough, and 
obedience to the letter all through the campaigning; but 
that don’t grate on a fellow ; if he’s worth his salt lie’s 
sure to understand that he must move like clockwork in 


UNDER THE HOUSES OP nAlR. 


275 


a fight, and that he’s to go to hell at double-quick-march, 
and mute as a mouse, if his officers see fit to send him. 
That's all right, but they don’t fidget you here about the 
little fal-lals ; you may stick your pipe in your mouth, you 
may have your lark, you may do as you like, you may 
spend your decompte how you choose, you may settle your 
little duel as you will, you may shout and sing and jump 
and riot on the march, so long as you march on ; you may 
lounge about half dressed in any style as suits you best, so 
long as you’re up to time when the trumpets sound for 
you ; and that’s what a man likes. He’s ready to be a 
machine when the machine’s wanted in working trim, but 
when it’s run off the line and the steam all let off, he do like 
to oil his own wheels, and lie a bit in the sun at his fancy. 
There aren’t better stuff to make soldiers out of nowhere 
than Englishmen, God bless ’em, but they’re badgered, 
they’re horribly badgered, and that’s why the service don’t 
take over there, let alone the way the country grudge ’em 
every bit of pay. In England you go in the ranks — well, 
they all just tell you you’re a blackguard, and there’s the 
lash, and you’d better behave yourself or you’ll get it hot 
and hot ; they take for granted you’re a bad lot or you 
wouldn’t be there, and in course you’re riled and go to the 
bad according, seeing that it’s what’s expected of you. 
Here, contrariwise, you come in the ranks and get a welcome, 
and feel that it just rests with yourself whether you won’t 
be a fine fellow or not ; and just along of feelin’ that you’re 
pricked to show the best metal you’re made on, and not to 
let nobody else beat you out of the race like. Ah ! it 
makes a wonderful difference to a fellow — a wonderful dif- 
ference — whether the service he’s come into look at him as a 
scamp that never will be nothin’ but a scamp, or as a rascal 
that’s maybe got in him, all rascal though he is, the pluck 
to turn into a hero. It makes a wonderful difference, this 
’ere, whether you’re looked at as stuff that’s only fit to be 
shoveled into the sand after a battle ; or as stuff that’ll be- 
like churn into a great man. And it’s just that difference, 
sir, that France has found out, and England hasn’t — God 
bless her all the same.” 

With which the soldier whom England had turned adrift, 
and France had won in her stead, concluded his long ora* 


276 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


tion by dropping on his knees to refill his Corporal’s chi* 
bouque. 

“ A army’s just a machine, sir, in course,” he concluded, 
as he rammed in the Turkish tobacco. “But then it’s a live 
machine for all that; and each little bit of it feels for it- 
self like the joints in an eel’s body. Now, if only one of 
them little bits smarts, the whole crittur goes wrong — 
there’s the mischief.” 

Bel-a-faire-peur listened thoughtfully to his comrade 
where he lay flung full length on the skins. 

“I dare say you are right enough. I knew nothing of 
my men when — when I was in England; we none of us 
did; but I can very well believe what you say. Yet — 
fine fellows though they are here, they are terrible black- 
guards !” 

“In course they are, sir; they wouldn’t be such larky 
company unless they was. But what I say is that they’rg 
scamps who’re told they may be great men if they like ; not 
scamps who’re told that because they’re once gone to the 
devil they must always keep there. It makes all the differ- 
ence in life.” 

“Yes — it makes all the difference in life, whether hope 
is left, or — left out 1” 

The words were murmured with a half smile that had a 
dash of infinite sadness in it; the other looked at him 
quickly with a shadow of keen pain passing over the bright, 
frank, laughing features of his sunburnt face ; he knew that 
the brief words held the whole history of a life. 

“Won’t there never be no hope, sir?” he whispered, 
while his voice trembled a little under the long fierce 
“Zephyr” sweep of his yellow moustaches. 

The Chasseur rallied himself with a slight, careless laugh; 
the laugh with which he had met before now the onslaught 
of charges ferocious as those of the magnificent day of 
Mazagran. 

“ Whom for? Both of us ? Oh yes, very likely we shall 
achieve fame, and die sous-ofiiciers or gardes-champetres 1 
A splendid destiny.” 

“No, sir,” said the other with the hesitation still in the 
quiver of his voice. “You know I meant, no hope of 
your ever being again ” 


UNDER THE HOUSES OP HAIR. 277 

He stopped ; be scarcely knew bow to phrase the thoughts 
he was thinking. 

The other moved with a certain impatience. 

“ How often must I tell you to forget that I was evei 
anything except a soldier of France? — forget as I have 
forgotten it 1” 

The audacious, irrepressible “ Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort,” 
whom nothing could daunt and nothing could awe, looked 
penitent and ashamed as a chidden spaniel. 

“I know, sir. I have tried, many a year, but I thought 
perhaps as how his lordship’s death ” 

“No life and no death can make any difference to me, 
except the death that some day an Arbico’s lunge will give 
me ; and that is a long time coming.” 

“Ah, for God’s sake, Mr. Cecil, don’t talk like this !” 

The Chasseur gave a short, sharp shiver, and started at 
the name, as if a bullet had struck him. 

“Never say that again 1” 

Rake, Algerian-christened Crache - au-nez- d’la- Mori, 
stammered a contrite apology. 

“I never have done, sir, — not for never a year, but it 
wrung it out of me like — you talking of wanting death in 
that way ” 

“Oh, I don’t want death!” laughed the other, with a 
low, indifferent laughter, that had in it a singular tone of 
sadness all the while. “ I am of our friends the Spahis’ 
opinion — that life is very pleasant with a handsome well- 
chosen harem, and a good horse to one’s saddle. Unhap- 
pily harems are too expensive for Roumis ! Yet I am not 
sure that I am not better amused in the Chasseurs than I 
was in the Household — specially when we are at war. I 
suppose we must be wild animals at the core, or we should 
never find such an infinite zest in the death grapple. Good 
night !” 

He stretched his long, slender, symmetrical limbs out on 
the skins that made his bed, and closed his eyes, with the 
chibouque still in his mouth, and its amber bowl resting on 
the carpet, which the friendship and honor of Sidi-Ilderim 
had strewn over the bare turf on which the house of hair 
was raised. He was accustomed to sleep as soldiers sleep, 
in all the din of a camp, or with the roar of savage brutes 

24 


2T8 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


echoing from the hills around, with his saddle beneath his 
head, under a slab of rock, or with the knowledge that at 
every instant the alarm might be given, the drums roll out 
over the night, and the enemy be down like lightning on 
the bivouac. But now a name — long unspoken to him — 
had recalled years he had buried far and forever from the 
first day that he had worn the kepi d’ordonnance of the 
Army of Algeria, and been enrolled among its wild and 
brilliant soldiers. 

Now, long after his comrade had slept soundly, and the 
light in the single bronze Turkish candle-branch had flick- 
ered and died away, the Chasseur d’Afrique lay wakeful, 
looking outward through the folds of the tent at the dark 
and silent camp of the Arabs, and letting his memory drift 
backward to a time that had grown to be to him as a dream 
— a time when another world than the world of Africa had 
known him as Bertie Cecil. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 

CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 

“ On li<§ 1 We are a queer lot; a very queer lot. Sweep- 
ings of Europe,” said Claude de Chanrellon, dashing some 
vermout off his golden moustaches, where he lay full length 
on three chairs outside the Cafe in the Place du Gouverne- 
ment, where the lamps were just alit, and shining through 
the burnished moonlight of an Algerian evening, and the 
many-colored, many-raced, picturesque, and polyglot pop- 
ulation of the town were all fluttering out with the sunset, 
like so many gay-colored moths. 

“ Hein ! Diamonds are found in the chiffonier’s* sweep- 
ings,” growled a General of Division, who was the most 
terrible martinet in the whole of the French service, but 
who loved “mes enfans d’enfer’’\ as he was wont to term 


Hajy-picker. 


f My children of hell. 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


279 


his mer, with a great love, and who would never hear an- 
other disparage them, however he might order them blows 
of the matraque , or exile them to Beylick himself. 

“You are poetic, mon General,” said Claude de Chan- 
rellon; “but you are true. We are a furnace in which 
Blackguardism is burnt into Dare-devilry, and turned cut 
as Heroism. A fine manufacture that, and one at which 
France has no equal.” 

“But our manufactures keep the original hall mark, and 
show that the devil made them if the drill have moulded 
them 1” urged a Colonel of Tirailleurs Indigenes. 

Chanrellon laughed, knocking the ash off a huge cigar. 

“ Pardieu I We do our original maker credit then ; no- 
thing good in this world without a dash of diablerie. Scru- 
ples are the wet blankets, proprieties are the blank walls, 
principles are the quickset hedges of life, but devilry is its 
champagne J” 

“ Yentrebleu 1” growled the General. “We have a right 
to praise the blackguards; without them our conscripts 
would be very poor trash. The conscript fights because 
he has to fight, the blackguard fights because he loves to 
fight. A great difference that.” 

The Colonel of Tirailleurs lifted his eyes ; a slight pale 
effeminate dark-eyed Parisian, who looked scarcely stronger 
than a hot-house flower, yet who, as many an African chron- 
icle could tell, was swift as fire, keen as steel, unerring as 
a leopard’s leap, untiring as an Indian on trail, once in the 
field with his Indigenes. 

“In proportion as one loves powder, one has been a 
scoundrel, mon General,” he murmured, “ what the cata- 
logue of your crimes must be 1” 

The tough old campaigner laughed grimly; he took it as 
a high compliment. 

“ Sapristi ! The cardinal virtues don’t send anybody I 
guess into African service. And yet, pardieu, I don’t know. 
What fellows I have known 1 I have had men among my 
Zephyrs — and they were the wildest pratiques too — that 
would have ruled the world ! I have had more wit, more 
address, more genius, more devotion, in some headlong 
scamp of a loustic than all the courts and cabinets would 
furnish. Such lives, such lives too, morbleu !” 


280 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


And he drained his absinthe thoughtfully, musing on the 
marvelous vicissitudes of war, and on the patrician blood, 
the wasted wit, the Beaumarchais talent, the Mirabeau 
power, the adventures like a page of fairy tale, the brains 
whose strength could have guided a scepter, which he had 
found and known, hidden under the rough uniform of a 
Zephyr, buried beneath the canvas shirts of a Roumi, lost 
forever in the wild lawless escapades of rebellious pra- 
tiques,* who closed their days in the stifling darkness of 
the dungeons of Beylick, or in some obscure skirmish, some 
midnight vidette, where an Arab flissa severed the cord of 
the warped life, and the death was unhonored by even a 
line in the Gazettes du Jour. 

“Faith !” laughed Chanrellon, regardless of the Gener- 
al’s observation. “If we all published our memoirs, the 
world would have a droll book. Dumas and Terrail would 
be beat out of the field. The real recruiting sergeants 
that send us to the ranks would be soon found to be ” 

“Women I” growled the General. 

“Cards,” sighed the Colonel. 

“Absinthe,” muttered another. 

“Mussetism in a garret.” 

“Politics un peu trop forty 

“A comedy that was hissed.” 

“Carbonarist vows when one was a fool.” 

“The spleen.” 

“The dice.” 

“The roulette.” 

“The natural desire of humanity to kill and to get 
killed 1” 

“Morbleu !” cried Chanrellon, as the voices closed, “all 
those mischiefs beat the drum, and send volunteers to the 
ranks, sure enough; but the General named the worst. 
Look at that little Cora; the Minister of War should give 
her the Cross. She sends us ten times more fire-eaters than 
the Conscription does. Five fine fellows — of the vieille 
roche too — joined to-day, because she has stripped them 
of everything, and they have nothing for it but the service. 
She is invaluable, Cora.” 


* Insubordinates. 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


m 


11 And there is not much to look at in her either,” ob- 
jected a captain, who commanded Turcos. “I saw her 
when our detachment went to show in Paris. A baby face, 
innocent as a cherub — a soft voice — a shape that looks as 
slight and as breakable as the stem of my glass — there is 
the end !” 

The Colonel of Tirailleurs laughed scornfully but gently; 
he had been a great lion of the fashionable world before 
he came out to his Indigenes. 

“The end of Cora! The end of her is — ‘VEnferV 
My good Alcide — that 1 baby face 5 has ruined more of us 
than would make up a battalion. She is so quiet, so 
tender; smiles like an angel, glides like a fawn; is a 
little . sad too, the innocent dove ; looks at you with eyes 
as clear as water, and paf ! before you know where you 
are, she has pillaged with both hands, and you wake one 
fine morning bankrupt I” 

“ Why do you let her do it ?” growled the vieille mous- 
tache , who had served under Junot, when a little lad, and 
had scant knowledge of the ways and wiles of the syrens of 
the Rue Breda. 

“Ah-bah I” said the Colonel, with a shrug of his shoul- 
ders; “it is the thing to be ruined by Cora. There is 
Bebee-je-m’enfous ; there is Blonde-Miou-Miou ; there is 
the Cerisette; there is Neroli ; there is Loto — any one of 
them' is equally good style with Cora ; but to be at all 
in the fashion, one must have been talked of with one of 
the six.” 

“Diantre!” sighed Claude de Chanrellon, stretching his 
handsome limbs, with a sigh of recollection ; for Paris had 
been a Paradise Lost to him for many seasons, and he had 
had of late years but one solitary glimpse of it. “ It was 
Coeur d’Acier who was the rage in my time. She ate me 
up — that woman — in three months. I had not a hundred 
francs left: she stripped me as bare as a pigeon. Her 
passion was emeralds en cabochon* just then. Well, 
emeralds en cabochon made an end of me, and sent me out 
here. Cceur d’Acier was a wonderful woman ! — and the 
chief wonder of her was, that she was as ugly as sin.” 


* Emeralds uncut. 

24 * 


282 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


"Ugly?” 

“Ugly as sin 1 But she had the knack of making her- 
self more charming than Venus. How she did it nobody 
knew; but men left the prettiest creatures for her: and 
she ruined us, I think, at the rate of a score a month.” 

“ Like Loto,” chimed in the Tirailleur. “Loto has not 
a shred of beauty. She is a big, angular, raw-boned 
Normande, with a rough voice, and a villainous patois ; 
but to be well with Loto is to have achieved distinction at 
once. She will have nothing under the third order of 
nobility ; and Prince Paul shot the Due de Var about her 
the other day. She is a great creature, Loto : nobody 
knows her secret.” 

“ L'audace , mon ami; toujour s de Vaudacel ”* said 
Chanrellon, with a twist of his superb moustaches. “ It is 
the finest quality out ; nothing so sure to win. Hallo 1 
there is le beau caporal listening. Ah 1 Bel-d-faire-peur, 
you fell, too, among the Lotos and the Cceurs d’Acier 
once, I will warrant.” 

The Chasseur, who was passing, paused and smiled a 
little, as he saluted. 

“ Coeurs d’Acier are to be found in all ranks of the sex, 
monsieur, I fancy ?” 

“Bah! you beg the question. Did not a woman send 
you out here — eh ?” 

“No, monsieur, — only chance.” 

“A fig for your chance ! Women are the mischief that 
casts us adrift to chance.” 

“ Monsieur, we cast ourselves sometimes.” 

“Dieu de Dieu ! I doubt that. We should go straight 
enough if it were not for them.” 

The Chasseur smiled again. 

“ M. le Viscomte thinks we are sure to be right, then, 
if, for the key to every black story, we ask, ‘Who was 
she V ” 

“Of course I do. Well! who was she? We are all 
quoting our tempters to-night. Give us your story, mon 
brave /” 


* Audacity, my friend ! Always that 1 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


283 


“Monsieur, you have it in the folios matricules, as well 
as my sword could write it.” 

“Good, good!” muttered the listening General. The 
soldier-like answer pleased him, and he looked attentively 
at the giver of it. 

Chanrellon’s brown eyes flashed a bright response. 

“And your sword writes in a brave man’s fashion — 
writes what France loves to read. But before you wore 
your sword here ? Tell us of that. It was a romance — 
wasn’t it?” 

dt If it were, I have folded down the page, monsieur.” 

“ Open it then ! Come — what brought you out among 
us ? You had gamed au roi depouille — that was it ? 
Out with it !” 

“ Monsieur, direct obedience is a soldier’s duty ; but I 
never heard that inquisitive annoyance was an officer’s 
privilege ?” 

The words were calm, cold, a little languid, and a little 
haughty. The manner of old habit, the instinct of buried 
pride spoke in them, and disregarded the barrier between 
a private of Chasseurs who was but a sous-officier, and a 
Colonel Commandant who was also a noble of France. 

Involuntarily, all the men sitting round the little tables, 
outside the cafe, turned and looked at him. The boldness 
of speech and the quietude of tone drew all their eyes in 
curiosity upon him. 

Chanrellon flushed scarlet over his frank brow, and an 
instant’s passion gleamed out of his eyes : the next he 
threw his three chairs down with a crash, as he shook his 
mighty frame like an Alpine dog, and bowed with a 
French grace, with a campaigner’s frankness. 

“A right rebuke ! — fairly given, and well deserved. I 
thank you for the lesson.” 

The Chasseur looked surprised and moved ; in truth, he 
was more touched than he showed. Under the rule of 
Chateauroy, consideration or courtesy had been things 
long unshown to him. Involuntarily, forgetful of rank, he 
stretched his hand out, on the impulse of soldier to sol- 
dier, of gentleman to gentleman. Then, as the bitter re- 
membrance of the difference of rank and station between 
them flashed on his memory, he was raising it proudly but 


284 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


deferentially, in the salute of a subordinate to his superior, 
when Chanrellon’s grasp closed on it readily. The victim 
of Cceur d’Acier was of as gallant a temper as ever blent 
the reckless condottiere with the thoroughbred noble. 

The Chasseur colored slightly, as he remembered that 
he had forgotten alike his own position and their relative 
stations. 

“I beg your pardon, Monsieur le Viscomte,” he said 
simply, as lie gave the salute with ceremonious grace, and 
passed onward rapidly, as though he wished to forget and 
to have forgotten the momentary self-oblivion of which he 
had been guilty. 

“Dieu 1” muttered Chanrellon, as he looked after him, 
and struck his hand on the marble-topped table till the 
glasses shook. “ I would give a year’s pay to know that 
fine fellow’s history. He is a gentleman — every inch of 
him.” 

“And a good soldier, which is better,” growled the 
General of Brigade, who had begun life in his time driving 
an ox-plow over the heavy tillage of Alsace. 

“A private of Chateauroy’s — eh ?” asked the Tirailleur, 
lifting his eye-glass to watch the Chasseur as he went. 

“ Pardieu, — yes, — more’s the pity,” said Chanrellon, who 
spoke his thoughts as hastily as a hand-grenade scatters 
its powder. “ The Black Hawk hates him — God knows 
why — and he is kept down in consequence, as if he were 
the idlest lout or the most incorrigible rebel in the service. 
Look at what he has done. All the Bureaux will tell you 
there is not a finer Roumi in Africa — not even among our 
Schaouacks 1 Since he joined, there has not been a hot and 
heavy thing with the Arabs that he has not had his share 
in. There has not been a campaign in Oran or Kabaila 
that he has not gone out with. His limbs are slashed all 
over with Bedouin steel. He rode once twenty leagues to 
deliver dispatches with a spear-head in his side, and fell, 
in a dead faint, out of his saddle just as he gave them up 
to the commandant’s own hands. He saved the day, two 
years ago, at Granaila. We should have been cut to 
pieces, as sure as destiny, if he had not collected a hand- 
ful of broken Chasseurs together, and rallied them, and rated 
them, and lashed them with their shame, till they dashed with 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


285 


him to a man into the thickest of the fight, and pierced the 
Arabs’ center, and gave us breathing room, till we all charged 
together, and beat the Arbicos back like a herd of jackals. 
There are a hundred more like stories of him — every one 
of them true as my saber; — and, in reward, he has just 
been made a galonne!” 

“ Superb I” said the General, with grim significance. “ Ce 
n'est pas & la France — ga! Twelve years 1 In five under 
Napoleon, he would have been at the head of a brigade; 
but then — ” and the veteran drank his absinthe with a re- 
gretful melancholy; “but then, Napoleon read his men 
himself and never read them wrong. It is a divine gift 
that for commanders.” 

“The Black Hawk can read, too,” said Chanrellon, 
meditatively; it was the “petit nom,” that Chateauroy 
had gained long before, and by which he was best known 
through the army. “No eyes are keener than his, to trace 
a lascar kebir. But, where he hates, he strikes beak and 
talons — pong ! — till the thing drops dead — even where he 
strikes a bird of his own brood . n 

“That is bad,” said the old General, sententiously. 
“ There are four people who should have no personal likes 
or dislikes : they are an innkeeper, a schoolmaster, a ship’s 
skipper, and a military chief.” 

With which axiom he called for some more vert-vert. 

Meanwhile, the Chasseur went his way through the cos- 
mopolitan groups of the great square. A little farther 
onward, laughing, smoking, chatting, eating ices outside a 
Cafe Chantant, were a group of Englishmen — a yachting 
party, whose schooner lay in the harbor. He lingered a 
moment, and lighted a fusee, just for the sake of hearing 
the old familiar words. As he bent his head above the 
vesuvian, no one saw the shadow of pain that passed over 
his face. 

But one of them looked at him curiously and earnestly : 
“The deuce,” he murmured to the man nearest him, “who 
the dickens is it that French soldier’s like?” 

The French soldier heard, and, with the cigar in his 
teeth, moved away quickly. He was uneasy in the city — 
uneasy lest he should be recognized by any passer-by or 
tourist. 


28G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“I need not fear that, though,' ” he thought with a smile. 
“ Ten years ! — why, in that world, we used to forget the 
blackest ruin in ten days, and the best life among us ten 
hours after its grave was closed. Besides, I am safe enough. 
I am dead 1” 

And he pursued his onward way, with the red glow of 
the cigar under the chestnut splendor of his beard, and the 
black eyes of veiled Moresco women flashed lovingly on 
his tall lithe form, with the scarlet ceinturon swathed 
round his loins, and the scarlet undress fez set on his fore- 
head, fair as a woman’s still, despite of the tawny glow of 
*the Afric sun, that had been on it for so long. 

He was “dead;” therein had laid all his security; there- 
by had “Beauty of the Brigades” been buried beyond 
all discovery in “ Bel-a-faire-peur ” of the 2d Chasseurs 
d’Afrique. When, on the Marseilles rails, the maceration 
and slaughter of as terrible an accident as ever befell a train 
rushing through midnight darkness, at headlong speed, 
had left himself and the one man faithful to his fortunes 
unharmed by little less than a miracle; he had seen in the 
calamity the surest screen from discovery or pursuit. 

Leaving the baggage where it was jammed among the 
debris, he had struck across the country with Rake for the 
few leagues that still lay between them and the city, and 
had entered Marseilles as weary foot travelers, before half 
the ruin on the rails had been seen by the full noon sun. 

As it chanced, a trading yawl was loading in the port, 
to run across to Algiers that very day. The skipper was 
short of men, and afraid of the Lascars, who were the only 
sailors that he seemed likely to find, to fill up the vacant 
places in his small crew. 

Cecil offered himself and his comrade for the passage. 
He had only a very few gold pieces on his person, and he 
was willing to work his way across, if he could. 

“But you’re a gentleman,” said the skipper, doubtfully 
eyeing him, and his velvet dress, and his black sombrero 
with its eagle’s plume. “ I want a rare, rough, able sea- 
man, for there’ll be like to be foul weather. She looks too 
fair to last,” he concluded, with a glance upward a-t the 
sky. 

He was a Liverpool man, master and owner of hi> own 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


28T 


rakish-looking little black-hulled craft, that, rumor was 
wont to say, was not averse to a bit of slating, if sho 
found herself in far seas, with a likely run before her. 

“You’re a swell, that’s what you are,” emphasized the 
skipper. “You bean’t no sort of use to me.” 

“ Wait a second,” answered Cecil. “ Did you ever chance 
to hear of a schooner called BeginaV' 1 

The skipper’s face lighted in a moment. 

“ Her as was in the Biscay, July come two years ? her as 
druv’ through the storm like a mad thing, and flew like a 
swallow, when everything was splittin’ and founderin’, and 
shipping seas around her ? her as was the first to bear 
down to the great Wrestler, a-lyin’ there hull over in 
water, and took aboard all as ever she could hold o’ the 
passengers, a-pitchin’ out her own beautiful cabin fittins to 
have as much room for the poor wretches as ever she could ? 
Be you a-meanin’ her ?” 

Cecil nodded assent. 

“ She was my yacht, that’s all ; and I was without a 
captain through that storm. Will you think me a good 
enough sailor now ?” 

The skipper wrung his hand, till he nearly wrung it off. 

“Good enough I Blast my timbers I there aren’t ono 
will beat you in any waters. Come on, sir, if so be as you 
wishes it ; but never a stroke of work shall you do atween 
my decks. I never did think as how one of your yachting- 
nobs could ever be fit to lay hold of a tiller; but, hang me, 
if the Club make such sailors as you it’s a rare ’un ! Lord 
a mercy 1 why, my wife was in the Wrestler. I’ve heard 
her tell scores of times as how she was a’most dead when 
that little yacht came through a swaling sea, that was all 
heavin’ and roarin’ round the wreck, and as how the swell 
what owned it gev’ his cabin up to the womenkind, and had 
his swivel guns and his handsome furniture pitched over- 
board, that he might be able to carry more passengers, and 
fed ’em, and gev’ ’em champagne all around, and treated 
’em like a prince, till he ran ’em straight into Brest Har- 
bor. But, damn me ! that ever a swell like you should ” 

“ Let’s weigh anchor,” said Bertie, quietly. 

And so he crossed unnoticed to Algeria, while through 
Europe the tidings went, that the mutilated form, crushed 


288 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


between iron and wood, on the Marseilles line, was his, and 
that he had perished in that awful, ink-black, sultry south- 
ern night, when the rushing trains had met, as meet the 
thunder-clouds. The world thought him dead; as such 
the journals recorded him, with the shameful outlines of 
imputed crime, to make the death the darker ; as such his 
name was forbidden to be uttered at Royallieu ; as such 
the Seraph mourned him with passionate loving force, re- 
fusing to the last to accredit his guilt: — and he, leaving 
them in their error, was drafted into the French army 
under two of his Christian names, which happily had a 
foreign sound — Louis Yictor — and laid aside forever his 
identity as Bertie Cecil. 

He went at once on service in the interior, and had 
scarcely come in any of the larger towns since he had 
joined. His only danger of recognition had once been 
when a Marshal of France, whom he had used to know 
well in Paris and at the court of St. James, held an in- 
spection of the African troops. 

Filing past the brilliant stalf, he had ridden at only a few 
yards’ distance from his old acquaintance, and, as he 
saluted, had glanced involuntarily at the face that he had 
seen oftentimes in the Salles des Marechaux, and even 
under the roof of Royallieu. The great chief’s keen blue 
eyes were scrutinizing the regiment, ready to note a chain 
loose, a belt awry, a sword specked with rust, if such a sin 
there were against “ les ordonnances” in all the glittering 
squadrons; and swept <*ver him, seeing in him but one 
among thousands — a unit in the mighty aggregate of the 
“ raw- .material ” of war. 

Tlffi Marshal only muttered to a General beside him, 
“ Why don’t they all ride like that man ? He has the seat 
of the English Guards.” But that it was in truth an offi- 
cer of the English Guards, and a friend of his own, who 
paced past him as a private of Algerian Horse, the French 
leader never dreamed. 

From the extremes of luxury, indolence, indulgence, 
pleasure, and extravagance, Cecil came to the extremes of 
hardship, poverty, discipline, suffering, and toil. From a 
life where every sense was gratified, he came to a life 
where every privation was endured. He had led the 




CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


2Sd 


fashion; — he came where ho had to bear without a word 
the curses, oaths, and insults of a corporal or a sous-lieu- 
tenant. He liad been used to every delicacy and delight ; 
— he came where he had to, take the coarse black bread of 
the army as a rich repast. He had thought it too much 
trouble to murmur flatteries in great ladies’ ears; — he 
came where morning, noon, and night the inexorable de- 
mands of rigid rules compelled his incessant obedience, 
vigilance, activity, and self-denial. He had known nothing 
from his childhood up except an atmosphere of amusement, 
refinement, brilliancy, and idleness; — he came where gnaw- 
ing hunger, brutalized jest, ceaseless toil, coarse obscenity, 
agonized pain, and pandemoniac mirth alternately filled the 
measure of the days. 

A sharper contrast, a darker ordeal, rarely tried the 
steel of any man’s endurance ; yet, under it, he verified the 
truth, “Bon sang ne peut menlir .” No Spartan could have 
borne the change more mutely, more staunchly, than did 
the “dandy of the Household.” 

The first years were, it is true, years of intense misery 
to him. Misery, when all the blood glowed in him under 
some petty tyrant’s jibe, and he had to stand immovable, 
holding his peace. Misery, when the hunger and thirst of 
long marches tortured him, and his soul sickened at the 
half-raw offal, and the water thick with dust, and stained 
with blood, which the men round him seized so ravenously. 
Misery, when the dreary dawn broke, only to usher in a 
day of mechanical manoeuvres, of petty tyrannies, of barren 
burdensome hours in the exercise-ground, of convoy duty 
in the burning sun-glare, and under the heat of harness ; 
and the weary night fell with the din and uproar, and the 
villainous blasphemy, and befouled merriment of the riot- 
ous Chambree, that denied even the peace and oblivion of 
sleep. They were years of infinite wretchedness oftentimes, 
only relieved by the loyalty and devotion of the man who 
had followed him into his exile. But, however wretched, 
they never wrung a single regret or lament from Cecil. 
He had come out to this life ; he took it as it was. As, 
having lost the title to command, the high breeding in 
him made him render implicitly the mute obedience which 
was the first duty of his present position, so it made him 
T 25 


290 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


accept, from first to last, without a sign of complaint or of 
impatience, the altered fortunes of his career. The hard- 
est-trained, lowest- born, longest -inured soldier in the 
Zephyr ranks did not bear himself with more apparent 
content and more absolute fortitude than did the man who 
had used to think it a cruelty to ride with his troop from 
Windsor to Wormwood Scrubs, and had never taken the 
trouble to load his own gun any shooting season, or to 
draw off his own coat any evening. He suffered acutely 
many times ; suffered till he was heart-sick of his life ; but 
he never sought to escape the slightest penalty or hard- 
ship, and not even Hake ever heard from him a single 
syllable of irritation or of self-pity. 

Moreover, the war-fire woke in him. 

In one shape or another, active service was almost 
always his lot, and hot, severe campaigning was his first 
introduction to military life in Algeria. The latent in- 
stinct in him — the instinct that had flashed out during his 
lazy fashionable calm in all moments of danger, in all days 
of keen sport; the instinct that had made him fling him- 
self into the duello with the French boar, and made him 
mutter to Forest King, “ Kill me if you like, but don’t fail 
me 1” — was the instinct of the born soldier. In peril, in 
battle, in reckless bravery, in the rush of the charge and 
the excitement of the surprise, in the near presence of 
death, and in the chase of a foe through a hot African 
night when both were armed to the teeth, and one or both 
must fall when the grapple earned — in all these that old in- 
stinct, aroused and unloosed, made him content ; made 
him think that the life which brought them was worth the 
living. 

There had always been in him a reckless dare-devilry, 
which had slept under the serene effeminate insouciance of 
his careless temper and his pampered habits. It had full 
rein now, and made him, as the army affirmed, one of the 
most intrepid, victorious, and chivalrous lascars of its fiery 
ranks. Fate had flung him off his couch of down into the 
tempest of war, into the sternness of life spent ever on the 
border of the grave, ruled ever by an iron code, requiring 
at every step self-negation, fortitude, submission, courage, 
patience, the self-control which should take the uttermost 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


291 


provocation from those in command without even a look of 
reprisal, and the courageous recklessness which should meet 
death and deal death, which should be as the eagle to 
swoop, as the lion to rend. And he was not found want- 
ing in it. 

He was too thoroughbred to attempt to claim a supe- 
riority that fortune no longer conferred on him, to seek to 
obtain a deference that he had no longer the position to 
demand. He obeyed far more implicitly than many a ruf- 
fian filibuster, who had been among the dregs of society 
from his birth. And though his quick-eyed comrades 
knew, before he had been among them five minutes, that 
an “aristocrat” had taken refuge under the Flag of Maza- 
gran, they never experienced from him one touch of the in- 
solence that their own sous-officiers beat them with, as with 
the flat of the sword; and they never found in him one 
shadow of the arrogance that some fellow-soldier, who had 
swelled into a sergeant-major, or bristled into an adjutant, 
would strut with, like any turkey-cock. 

He was too quiet, too courteous, too calmly listless; he 
had too easy a grace, too soft a voice, and too many gen- 
tleman habits, for them. But when they found that he 
could fight like a Zouave, ride like an Arab, and bear 
shot- wounds or desert-thirst as though he were of bronze, 
it grew a delight to them to see of what granite and steel 
this dainty patrician was made; and they loved him with 
a rough, ardent, dog-like love, when they found that his 
last crust, in a long march, would always be divided ; that 
the most desperate service of danger was always volun- 
teered for by him; that no severity of personal chastise- 
ment ever made him clear himself of a false charge at a 
comrade’s expense; and that all his decompte went in giv- 
ing a veteran a stoup of wine, or a sick conscript a tempt- 
ing meal, or a prisoner of Beylick some food through the 
grating, scaled too at risk of life and limb. 

Cecil had all a soldier’s temper in him; and the shock 
which had hurled him out of ease, and levity, and ultra- 
luxury, to stand alone before as dark and rugged a fortune 
as ever fronted any man, had awakened the war fire which 
had only slumbered because lulled by habit and unaroused 
by circumstance. He had never before been called on to 


292 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


exert either thought or action; the necessity for both 
called many latent qualities in him into play. The same 
nature, which had made him wish to be killed over the 
Grand Military course, rather than live to lose the race, 
made him now bear privation as calmly, and risk death as 
recklessly, as the hardiest and most fiery loustic of the Afri- 
can cantonments. 

Bitter as the life often was, severe the suffering, and 
acute the deprivation, the sternest veteran scarcely took 
them more patiently, more silently, than the “aristocrat,” 
to whom a corked claret or a dusty race day had been 
calamities. Cast among these wild, iron-muscled Bohe- 
mians, who fought like tigers, and, were as impenetrable as 
rhinoceri, “race” was too strong in Cecil not to hold its 
own with them, whether in the quality of endurance, or the 
quality of daring. 

“ Main de femme , mais main de fer” the Roumis were 
wont to say of their comrade, with his delicate habits, 
li comme une Marquise du Faubourg” as they would 
growl impatiently ; and his tenacious patience which would 
never give way either in the toil of the camp or the grip of 
the struggle. 

On the surface it seemed as though never was there a 
life more utterly thrown away than the life of a Guardsman 
and a gentleman, a man of good blood, high rank, and 
talented gifts had he ever chosen to make anything of 
them, buried in the ranks of the Franco-African army, 
risking a nameless grave in the saud with almost every 
hour, associated with the roughest riffraff of Europe, liable 
any day to be slain by the slash of an Arab flissa, and re- 
warded for ten years’ splendid service by the distinctive 
badge of a corporal. Any one of the friends of his former 
years, seeing him thus, would have said, that he might as 
well be thrown at once into a pit in the sand, where the 
dead were piled twenty deep after a skirmish, to lie and 
rot, or be dug up by the talons of famished beasts, which- 
ever might chance, as live thus in the obscurity, poverty, 
and semi-barbarism of an Algerian private’s existence. 

Yet it might be doubted if any life would have done for 
him what this had done : it might be questioned, if, judg- 
ing a career not by its social position, but by its effect on 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


293 


character, any other would have been so well for him, or 
would equally have given steel and strength to the indo- 
lence and languor of his nature as this did. In his old 
world he would have lounged listlessly through fashionable 
seasons, and, in an atmosphere that encouraged his pro- 
found negligence of everything and his natural nil-admirari 
listlessness would have glided from refinement to effeminacy, 
and from lazy grace to blase inertia. 

The severity and the dangers of the campaigns with the 
French army had roused the sleeping lion in him, and made 
him as fine a soldier as ever ranged under any flag. He 
had suffered, braved, resented, fought, loved, hated, en- 
dured, and even enjoyed, here in Africa, with a force and 
a vividness that he had never dreamed possible in his calm, 
passionless, insouciant world of other days. He had known 
what the hunger of famine, what the torment of fever, 
what the agony of forbidden pride, what the wild delight 
of combat were. He had known what it was to long 
madly for a stoup of water; to lie raving, yet conscious, 
under the throes of gunshot wounds ; to be forced to bear 
impassively words for a tithe of which he could have 
struck across the mouth the chief who spoke them ; to find 
.in a draught of wretched wine, after days of marching, a 
relish that he had never found in the champagnes and bur- 
gundies of the Guards’ mess ; to love the dark Arab eyes, 
that smiled on him in his exile, as he had never loved those 
of any woman, and to suffer when the death-film gathered 
over them as he had never thought it in him to suffer for 
any death or any life ; to feel every nerve thrill, and every 
vein glow with fierce, exultant joy as the musketry pealed 
above the plains, and his horse pressed down on to the 
very mouths of the rifles, and the naked sabers flashed 
like the play of lightnings, and, over the dead body of his 
charger, he fought ankle deep in blood, with the Arabs 
circling like hawks, and their great blades whirling round 
him, catching the spears aimed at him with one hand, while 
he beat back their swords, blow for blow, with the other; — - 
he had known all these, the desert passions ; and while 
outwardly they left him much the same in character, they 
changed him vitally. They developed him into a magnificent 
soldier — too true a soldier not to make thoroughly his the 
25 * 


294 


TJNDER TWO FLAGS. 


service he had adopted, not to, oftentimes, almost forget 
that he had ever lived under any other flag than that tri- 
color which he followed and defended now. 

The quaint heroic Norman motto of his ancestors carved 
over the gates of Royallieu — “Cceur Vaillant Se Fait 
JRoyaume ” — verified itself in his case. Outlawed, beg- 
gared, robbed at a stroke of every hope and prospect, ho 
had taken his adversity boldly by the beard, and had made 
himself at once a country and a kingdom among the brave, 
fierce, reckless, loyal hearts of the men who came from 
north, south, east, and west, driven by every accident, and 
scourged by every fate, to fill up the battalions of North 
Africa. 

As he went now, in the warmth of the after-glow, he 
turned up into the Rue Babazoum, and paused before the 
entrance of a narrow, dark, tumble-down, picturesque shop, 
half like a stall of a Cairo bazaar, half like a Jew’s den 
in a Florentine alley. 

A cunning, wizen head peered out at him from the 
gloom. 

“ Ah-ha ! good even, Corporal Victor !” 

Cecil, at the words, crossed the sill and entered. 

“Have you sold any ?” he asked. There was a slight- 
constraint and hesitation in the words, as of one who can 
never fairly bend his spirit to the yoke of barter. 

The little, hideous, wrinkled, dwarf-liko creature, a trader 
in curiosities, grinned with a certain gratification, in disap- 
pointing this lithe-limbed, handsome Chasseur. 

“ Not one. The toys don’t take. Daggers now, or any- 
thing made out of spent balls, or flissas one can tell an 
Arab story about, go off like wild-fire; but your ivory 
bagatelles are no sort of use, M. le Caporal.” 

“Very well — no matter,” said Cecil simply, as he paused * 
a moment before some delicate little statuettes and carv- 
ings — miniature things, carved out of a piece of ivory, or a 
block of marble the size of a horse’s hoof, such as could be 
picked up in dry river channels, or broken off stray bould- 
ers ; slender crucifixes, wreaths of foliage, branches of wild 
fig, figures of Arabs and Moors, dainty heads of dancing- 
girls, and tiny chargers fretting like Bucephalus. They 
were perfectly conceived and executed. He had always 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


295 


had a D’Orsay-like gift that way, though, in common 
with all his gifts, he had utterly neglected all culture of it, 
until, cast adrift on the world, and forced to do something 
to maintain himself, he had watched the skill of the French 
soldiers at all such expedients to gain a few coins, and had 
solaced many a dreary hour in barracks and under canvas 
with the toy-sculpture, till he had attained a singular art 
at it. He had commonly given Rake the office of selling 
them, and as commonly spent all the proceeds on all other 
needs savs his own. 

He lingered a moment, with regret in his eyes ; he had 
scarcely a sou in his pocket, and he had wanted some 
money sorely that night for a comrade dying of a lung- 
wound — a noble fellow, a French artist, who, in an evil 
hour of desperation, had joined the army, with a poet’s tem- 
per that made its hard, colorless routine unendurable, and 
had been shot in the chest in a night-skirmish. 

“You will not buy them yourself?” he asked at length, 
the color flushing in his face ; he would not have pressed 
the question to save his own life from starving, but Leon 
Ramon would have no chance of a fruit or a lump of ice to 
cool his parched lips and still his agonized retching, unless 
he himself could get money to buy those luxuries that are 
too splendid and too merciful to be provided for a dying 
soldier, who knows so little of his duty to his country as 
to venture to die in his bed. 

“Myself!” screeched the dealer, with a derisive laugh. 
“ Ask me to give you my whole stock next, M. le Galonnef 
These trumperies will lie on hand for a year.” 

Cecil went out of the place without a word ; his thoughts 
were with Leon R^amon, and the insolence scarce touched 
him. “ How shall I get him the ice ?” he wondered. 
“ God ! if I had only one of the lumps that used to float 
in our claret cup !” 

As he left the den, a military fairy, all gay with blue and 
crimson, like the fuschia bell she most resembled, with a 
meerschaum in her scarlet lips and a world of wrath in her 
bright black eyes, dashed past him into the darkness 
within, and before the dealer knew or dreamt of her, tossed 
up the old man’s little shriveled frame like a shuttlecock, 
shook him till he shook like custards, flung him upward 


296 


TJNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and caught him as if he were the hoop in a game of La 
Grace, and set him down bruised, breathless, and terrified 
out of his wits. 

“Ah, chenapan!” cried Cigarette, with a volley of slang 
utterly untranslatable, “that is how you treat your betters, 
is it ? Miser, monster, crocodile, serpent I Harpagon was 
an angel to you.” (She knew Harpagon because some of 
her Rounds chattered bits of Molifcre.) “ He wanted 
the money and you refused it ? Ah — h — h ! son of Satan I 
you live on other men’s miseries ! Run after him — quick, 
and give him this, and this, and this, and this ; and say 
you were only in jest, and that the things were worth a 
Sheik’s ransom. Stay ! you must not give him too much, 
or he will know it is not you — viper ! Run quick, and 
breathe a word about me if you dare ; one whisper only, 
and my Spahis shall cut your throat from ear to ear. Off 1 
or you shall have a bullet to quicken your steps ; misers 
dance well when pistols play the minuet 1” 

With which exordium the little Amie du Drapeau shook 
her culprit at every epithet, emptied out a shower of gold 
and silver, just won at play, from the bosom of her uni- 
form, forced it into the dealer’s hands, hurled him out of 
his own door, and drew her pretty weapon with a clash 
from her sash. 

“ Run for your life ! — and do just what I bid you, or a 
shot shall crash your skull in as sure as my name is Ciga- 
rette 1” 

The little old Jew flew as fast as his limbs would carry 
him, clutching the coins in his horny hands. He was ter- 
rified to a mortal anguish, and had not a thought of re- 
sisting or disobeying her ; lie knew the fame of Cigarette — 
as who did not? Knew that she would fire at a man" as 
carelessly as at a cat, more carelessly in truth, for she 
favored cats, saving many from going into the Zouaves’ 
soup-caldrons, and favored civilians not at all ; and knew 
that at her rallying cry all the sabers about the town would 
be drawn without a second’s deliberation, and sheathed in 
anything or anybody that had offended her, for Cigarette 
was, in her fashion, Generalissima of all the Regiments of 
Africa. 

The dealer ran with all the speed of terror, and over- 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 297 

took Cecil, who was going slowly onward to the bar 
racks. 

“ Are you serious ?” he asked in surprise at the large 
amount, as the little Jew panted out apologies, entreaties, 
and protestations of his only having been in jest, and of 
his fervently desiring to buy the carvings at his own price, 
as he knew of a great collector in Paris to whom he 
needed to send them. 

“ Serious 1 Indeed am I serious, M. le Caporal,” pleaded 
the curiosity-trader, turning his head in agonized fear to see 
if the vivandiere’s pistol was behind him. “ The things will 
be worth a great deal to me where I shall send them, and 
though they are but bagatelles, what is Paris itself but 
one bagatelle? Pouf! they are all children there — they 
will love the toys. Take the money, I pray you, take the 
money !” 

Cecil looked at him a moment ; he saw the man was in 
earnest, and thought but little of his repentance and trepi- 
dation, for the citizens were all afraid of slighting or an- 
noying a soldier. 

“ So be it. Thank you,” he said, as he stretched out 
his hand and took the coins, not without a keen pang of 
the old pride that would not wholly be stilled, yet gladly 
for sake of the Chasseur dying yonder, growing deli- 
rious and wrenching the blood off his lungs in want of one 
touch of the ice, that was spoiled by the ton weight, to 
keep cool the wines and the fish of M. le Marquis de ChA- 
teauroy. And he went onward to spend the gold his sculp- 
tures had brought on some yellow figs and some cool golden 
grapes, and some ice-chilled wines that should soothe a lit- 
tle of the pangs of dissolution to his comrade, and bear 
him back a moment, if only in some fleeting dream, to the 
vine shadows and the tossing seas of corn, and the laugh- 
ing, sunlit sweetness of his own fair country by the blue 
Biscayan waves. 

“You did it? That is well. Now, see here — one word 
of me, now or ever after, and there is a little present that 
will come to you, hot and quick, from Cigarette,” said the 
little Friend of the Flag, with a sententious sternness that 
crushed each word deliberately through her tight-set pearly 
teeth. The unhappy Jew shuddered and shut his eyes as 


298 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


she held a bullet close to his sight, then dropped it with an 
ominous thud in her pistol barrel. 

“ Not a syllable, never a syllable,” he stammered ; “ and 
if I had known you were in love with him, ma belle ” 

A box on the ears sent him across his own counter. 

“ In love ? Parbleu ! I detest the fellow !” said Ciga- 
rette, with fiery scorn and as hot an oath. 

“ Truly ? Then why give your Napoleons ?” began 

the bruised and stammering Israelite. 

Cigarette tossed back her pretty head, that was curly 
and spirited and shapely as any thoroughbred spaniel’s ; a 
superb glance flashed from her eyes, a superb disdain sat 
on her lips. 

“ You are a Jew-trader; you know nothing of our code 
under the tricolor. We — nous autres soldats — are too 
proud not to aid even an enemy when he is in the right, 
and France always arms for justice 1” 

With which magnificent peroration she swept all the 
carvings — they were rightfully hers — off the table. 

“ They will light my cooking fire I” she said contempt- 
uously, as she vaulted lightly over the counter into the 
street, and pirouetted like a bit of fantoccini, that is wound 
up to waltz forever, along the slope of the crowded Baba- 
zoum. All made way for her, even the mighty Spahis and 
the trudging Bedouin mules, for all knew that if they did 
not she would make it for herself, over their heads or above 
their prostrated bodies. 

She whirled her way, like a gay-colored top set hum- 
ming down a road, through the divers motley groups, 
singing at the top of her sweet mirthful voice, for she was 
angry with herself ; and, for that, sang the more loudly the 
most wicked and risque of her slang songs, that, gave the 
morals of a Messalina in the language of a fish-wife, and 
yet had an inalienable, mischievous, contagious, dauntless 
French grace in it withal. Finally, she whirled herself 
into a dark deserted Moresco archway, a little out of the 
town, and dropped on a stone block, as a swallow, tired of 
flight, drops on to a bough. 

“Is that the way I revenge myself? Ah, bahl I de- 
serve to be killed 1 When he called me unsexed — unsexed 
— unsexed !” — and with each repetition of the infamous 


CIGARETTE EN BIENFAITRICE. 


299 


word, so bitter because vaguely admitted to be true, with 
her cheeks scarlet and her eyes aflame, and her hands 
clinched, she flung one of the ivory wreaths on to the 
pavement and stamped on it with her spurred heel until 
the carvings were ground into powdered fragments — 
stamped, as though it were a living foe, and her steel-bound 
foot were treading out all its life with burning hate and 
pitiless venom. 

In the act her passion exhausted itself, as the evil of 
such warm, impetuous, tender natures will ; she was very 
still, and looked at the ruin she had done with regret and 
a touch of contrition. 

“ It was very pretty — and cost him weeks of labor, 
perhaps,” she thought. 

Then she took all the rest up, one by one, and gazed at 
them. Things of beauty had had but little place in her 
lawless young life ; what she thought beautiful was a regi- 
ment sweeping out in full sunlight, with its eagles, and its 
colors, and its kettle-drums ; what she held as music was 
the beat of the r&veille and the mighty roll of the great 
artillery ; what made her pulse throb and her heart leap was 
to see two fine opposing forces draw near for the onslaught 
and thunder of battle. Of things of grace she had no 
heed, though she had so much grace herself ; and her life, 
though full of color, pleasure, and mischief, was as rough 
a one in most respects as any of her comrades’. These 
delicate artistic carvings were a revelation to her. 

Here was the slender pliant spear of the river- reed; here 
the rich foliage of the wild fig-tree ; here the beautiful 
blossom of the oleander; here fruit, and flower, and 
vine-leaf, and the pendulous ears of millet, twined together 
in their ivory semblance till they seemed to grow beneath 
her hands — and those little hands looked so brown and 
so powder-stained beside the pure snow whiteness of the 
wreaths ! She touched them reverently one by one ; all 
the carvings had their beauty for her, but those of the 
flowers had far the most. She had never noted any flowers 
in her life before, save those she strung together for the 
Zephyrs on the Jour de Mazagran. Her youth was a 
military ballad, rhymed vivaciously to the rhythm of the 
Pas de Charge ; but other or softer poetry had never by 


300 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


any chance touched her until now. Now that in her tiny, 
bronzed, war-hardened palms lay the white foliage, the 
delicate art-trifles of this Chasseur, who bartered his talent 
to get a touch of ice for the burning lips of his doomed 
comrade. 

“ He is an aristocrat — he has such gifts as this — and yet 
he is in the ranks, has no country, is so poor that he is 
glad of a Jew’s pittance, and must sell all this beauty to 
get a slice of melon for Leon Ramon 1” she thought, while 
the silvery moon strayed in through a brpken arch, and fell 
on an ivory coil of twisted lentiscus leaves and river grasses. 

And, lost in a musing pity, Cigarette forgot her vow of 
vengeance. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 

The Chambree of the Chasseurs was bright and clean 
in the morning light : in common with all Algerian barrack- 
rooms as unlike the barrack-rooms of the ordinary army as 
Cigarette, with her debonnaire devilry, smoking on a gun- 
wagon, was unlike a trim Normandy soubrette, sewing on 
a bench in the Tuileries gardens. 

Disorder reigned supreme; but Disorder, although a 
disheveled goddess, is very often a picturesque one, and 
more of an artist than her better-trained sisters ; and the 
disorder was brightened with a thousand vivid colors and 
careless touches that blent in confusion to enchant a painter’s 
eyes. The room was crammed with every sort of spoil 
that the adventurous pillaging temper of the troopers 
could forage from Arab tents, or mountain caves, or river 
depths, or desert beasts and birds. All things, from tiger- 
skins to birds’-nests, from Bedouin weapons to ostrich- 
eggs, from a lion’s mighty coat to a tobacco -stopper 
chipped out of a morsel of deal, were piled together, pell- 
mell, or hung against the whitewash walls, or suspended by 
cords from bed to bed. Everything that ingenuity and 


THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 


301 


hardihood, prompted by the sharp spur of hunger, could 
wrest from the foe, from the country, from earth or water, 
from wild beasts or riven rock, were here in the midst of 
the soldiers’ regimental pallets and regimental arms, making 
the Chambree at once atelier, storehouse, workshop, and 
bazaar ; while the men, cross-legged on their little hard 
couches, worked away with the zest of those who work for the 
few coins that alone will get them the food, the draught of 
wine, the hour’s mirth and indulgence at the estaminet, to 
which they look across the long stern probation of disci- 
pline and manoeuvre. 

Skill, grace, talent, invention whose mother was necessity, 
and invention that was the unforced offshoot of natural 
genius, were air at work; and the hands that could send 
the naked steel down at a blow through turban and through 
brain could shape, with a woman’s ingenuity, with a crafts- 
man skill, every quaint device and dainty bijou from stone 
and wood, and many-colored feathers, and mountain ber- 
ries, and all odds and ends that chance might bring to 
hand, and that the women of Bedouin tribes or the tourists 
of North Africa might hereafter buy with a wondrous tale 
appended to them, racy and marvelous as the Sapir slang 
and the military imagination could weave, to enhance the 
toys’ value, and get a few. coins more on them for their 
manufacture. 

Ignorance jostled art, and bizarrerie ran hand in hand 
with talent, in all the products of the Chasseurs’ extem- 
porized studio ; but nowhere was there ever clumsiness, 
and everywhere was there an industry, gay, untiring, 
accustomed to make the best of the worst ; the workers 
laughing, chattering, singing, in all good-fellowship, while 
the fingers that gave the dead-thrust held the carver’s 
chisel, and the eyes that glared blood-red in the heat of 
battle twinkled mischievously over the meerschaum bowl, 
in whose grinning form some great chief of the Bureaucratie 
had just been sculptured in audacious parody. 

In the midst sat Rake, tattooing with an eastern skill 
the skin of a great lion, that a year before he had killed 
in single combat in the heart of Oran, having watched for 
the beast twelve nights in vain, high perched on a leafy 
crest of rock, above a water-course. While he worked, 

26 


302 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


his tongue flew far and fast over the camp slang — the 
slangs of all nations came easy to him — in voluble con- 
versation with the Chasseur next him, who was making a fan 
out of feathers that any Peeress might have signaled with 
at the Opera. “ Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort” was in high 
popularity with his comrades; and had said but the truth 
when he averred that he had never been so happy as under 
the tricolor. The officers pronounced him an incurably 
audacious “pratique he was always in mischief, and the 
regimental rules he broke through like a terrier through a 
gauze net ; but they knew that when once the trumpets 
sounded Boot and Saddle, this yellow-haired dare-devil of 
an English fellow would be worth a score of more orderly 
soldiers, and that wherever his adopted flag was carried, 
there would he be, first and foremost, in everything save 
retreat. The English service had failed to turn Rake 
to account; the French service made no such mistake, but 
knew that though this British bulldog might set his teeth 
at the leash and the lash, he would hold on like grim death 
in a fight, and live game to the last, if well handled. 

Apart, at the head of the Chambree, sat Cecil. The 
banter, the songs, the laughter, the chorus of tongues, went 
on unslackened by his presence. lie had cordial sympathies 
with the soldiers : with those men who had been his fol- 
lowers in adversity and danger; and in whom he had found, 
despite all their occasional ferocity and habitual reckless- 
ness, traits aud touches of the noblest instincts of humanity. 
His heart was with them always, as his purse, and his wine, 
and his bread were alike shared ever among them. He 
had learned to love them well — these wild wolf-dogs, whose 
fangs were so terrible to their foes, but whose eyes would 
still glisten at a kind word, and who would give a staunch 
fidelity unknown to tamer animals. 

Living with them, one of them in all their vicissitudes, 
knowing all their vices, but knowing also all their virtues, 
owing to . them many an action of generous nobility, and 
watching them in many an hour when their gallant self- 
devotion and their loyal friendships went far to redeem 
their lawless robberies and their ruthless crimes, he under- 
stood them thoroughly, and he could rule them more surely 
in their tempestuous evil, because he comprehended them 


THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 


803 


so well in their mirth and in their better moods. When 
the grade of sous-officier gave him authority over them, 
they obeyed him implicitly because they knew that his 
sympathies were with them at all times, and that he would 
be the last to check their gayety, or to punish their harmless 
indiscretions. 

The warlike Roumis had always had a proud tenderness 
for their Bel-a-faire-peur, and a certain wondering respect 
for him ; but they would not have adored him to a man, 
as they did, unless they had known that they might laugh 
without restraint before him, and confide any dilemma to 
him sure of aid, if aid were in his power. 

The laughter, the work, and the clatter of conflicting 
tongues were at their height ; Cecil sat, now listening, now 
losing himself in thought, while, he gave the last touch to 
the carvings before him. They were a set of chessmen 
which it had taken him years to find materials for and to 
perfect ; the white men were in ivory, the black in walnut, 
and, were two opposing squadrons of French troops and of 
mounted Arabs. Beautifully carved, with every detail of 
costume rigid to truth, they were his master-piece, though 
they had only been taken up at any odd ten minutes that 
had happened to be unoccupied during the last three or four 
years. The chessmen had been about with him in so many 
places and under canvas so long, from the time that he 
chipped out their first Zouave pawn, as he lay in the broil- 
ing heat of Oran prostrate by a dry brook’s stony channel, 
that he scarcely cared to part with them, and had refused 
to let Rake offer them for salt^with all the rest of the 
carvings. Stooping over them, he did not notice the doors 
open at the end of the Chambree until a sudden silence 
that fell on the babble and uproar round him made him 
look up ; then he rose and gave the salute with the rest of 
his discomfited and awe-stricken troopers. Chateauroy 
with a brilliant party had entered. 

The Colonel flashed an eagle glance round. 

“ Fine discipline 1 You shall go and do this pretty work 
at Beylick !” 

The soldiers stood like hounds that see the lash; they 
knew that he was like enough to carry out his threat; 
though they were doing no more than they had always tacit 


S04 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


if not open permission to do. Cecil advanced, and fronted 
aim. 

“Mine is the blame, mon Commandant /” 

He spoke simply, gently, boldly ; standing with the cer- 
emony that he never forgot to show to their chief, where 
the glow of African sunlight through the casement of the 
Chambree fell full across his face, and his eyes met the dark 
glance of the “Black Hawk” unflinchingly. He never 
heeded that there was a gay, varied, numerous group be- 
hind Ch&teauroy; visitors who were looking over the 
barrack ; he only heeded that his soldiers were unjustly 
attacked and menaced. 

The Marquis gave a grim significant smile, that cut like 
so much cord of the scourge. 

“(7 a va san dire! Wherever there is insubordination 
in the regiment the blame is very certain to be yours ! Cor- 
poral Gaston, if you allow your Chambree to be turned 
into the riot of a public fair you will soon find yourself 
degraded from the rank you so signally contrive to dis- 
grace. ” 

The words were far less than the tone they were spoken 
in, that gave them all the insolence of so many blows, as 
he swung on his heel and bent to the ladies of the party he 
escorted. Cecil stood mute; bearing the rebuke as it 
became a Corporal to bear his Commander’s anger; a very 
keen observer might have seen that a faint flush rose over 
the sun tan of his face, and that his teeth clinched under 
his beard, but he let no other sign escape him. 

The very self-restraint irritated Chateauroy, who would 
hUve been the first to chastise the presumption of a reply, 
had any been attempted. 

“Back to your place, sir!” he said, with a wave of his 
hand, as he might have waved back a cur. “ Teach your 
men the first formula of obedience at any rate !” 

Cecil fell back in silence. With a swift warning glance 
at Rake, — whose mouth was working, and whose forehead 
was hot as fire, where he clinched his lion-skin, and longed 
to be once free,, to pull his chief down as lions pull in the 
death spring,— he went to his place at the farther end of 
the chamber and stood, keeping his eyes on the chess carv- 
ings, lest the control which was so bitter to retain should 


THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 305 

be broken if he looked on at the man who had been the 
curse and the antagonist of his whole life in Algeria. 

He saw nothing and heard almost as little of all that went 
on around him; there had been a flutter of cloud-like color 
in his sight, a faint dreamy fragrance on the air, a sound 
of murmuring voices and of low laughter; he had known 
that some guests or friends of the Marquis’s had come to 
view the barracks, but he never even glanced to see who 
or what they were. The passionate bitterness of just hatred, 
that he had to choke down as though it were the infamous 
instinct of some nameless crime, was on him. 

The moments passed, the hum of the voices floated to his 
ear, the ladies of the party lingered by this soldier and by 
that, buying half the things in the chamber, filling their 
hands with all the quaint trifles, ordering the daggers and 
the flissas and the ornamented saddles and the desert skins 
to adorn their chateaux at home; and raining down on the 
troopers a shower of uncounted Napoleons until the Chas* 
seurs, who had begun to think their trades would take them 
to Beylick, thought instead that they had drifted into dreams 
of El Dorado. He never looked up ; he heard nothing, 
Reeded-' nothing; he was dreamily wondering whether he 
should always be able so to hold his peace, and to withhold 
his arm, that he should never strike his tyrant down with 
one blow, in which all the opprobrium of years should be 
stamped out ? A voice woke him from his reverie. 

“Are those beautiful carvings yours ?” 

He looked up, and in the gloom of the alcove where he 
stood, where the sun did not stray, and two great rugs of 
various skins, with some conquered banners of Bedouins, 
hung like a black pall, he saw a woman’s eyes resting on 
him ; proud, lustrous eyes, a little haughty, very thoughtful, 
yet soft withal, as the deepest hue of deep waters. He 
bowed to her with the old grace of manner that had so 
amused and amazed the little vivandiere. 

“Yes, madame, they are mine.” . 

“Ah ? — what wonderful skill 1” 

She took the White King, an Arab Sheik on his charger, 
in her hand, and turned to those about her, speaking of its 
beauties and its workmanship in a voice low, very melodi- 
ous, ever so slightly languid, that fell on Cecil’s ear like a 
U 26* 


306 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


chime of long-forgotten music. Twelve years had drifted 
by since he had been in the presence of a high-bred woman, 
and those lingering, delicate tones had the note of his dead 
past. 

He looked at her ; at the gleam of the brilliant hair, at 
the arch of the proud brows, at the dreaming, imperial 
eyes; it was a face singularly dazzling, impressive and 
beautiful at all times ; most so of all in the dusky shadows 
of the waving desert banners, and the rough, rude, bar- 
baric life of the Caserne, where, a fille de joie or a cantin- 
niere were all of her sex that was ever seen, and those — 
poor wretches ! — were hardened, and bronzed, and beaten, 
and brandy-steeped out of all likeness to the fairness of 
women. 

“You have an exquisite art. They are for sale?” she 
asked him : she spoke with the careless gracious courtesy 
of a grande dame to a Corporal of Chasseurs, looking little 
at him, much at the ivory Kings and their mimic hosts of 
Zouaves and Bedouins. 

“They are at your service, madame.” 

“And their price?” She had been purchasing largely 
of the men on all sides as she had swept down the length 
of the Chambree, and she drew out some French bank- 
notes as she spoke. Never had the bitterness of poverty 
smitten him as it smote him now when this young patrician 
offered him her gold I, Old habits vanquished ; he forgot 
who and where he now was ; he bowed as in other days he 
had used to bow in the circle of St. James’s. 

“Is — the honor of your acceptance, if you will deign to 
give that.” 

He forgot that he was not as he once had been. He 
forgot that he stood but as a private of the French army 
before an aristocrate whose name he had never heard. 

She turned and looked at him, which she had never done 
before, so absorbed had she been in the chessmen, and so 
little did a Chasseur of the ranks pass into her thoughts. 
There was an extreme of surprise, there was something of 
offense, and there was still more of coldness in her glance; 
a proud, languid, astonished coldness of regard, though it 
softeued slightly as she saw that he had spoken in all 
courtesy of intent. 


THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 


301 


She bent her graceful regal head. 

“ I thank you. Your very clever work can of course only 
be mine by purchase.” 

And with that she laid aside the White King among his 
little troop of ivory Arabs and floated onward with her 
friends. Cecil’s face paled slightly under the mellow tint 
left there by the desert sun and the desert wind ; he swept 
the chessmen into their walnut case and thrust them out of 
sight under his knapsack. Then he stood motionless as a 
sentinel, with the great leopard skins and Bedouin banners 
behind him, casting a gloom that the gold points on his 
harness could scarcely break in its heavy shadow, and never 
moved till the echo of the voices, and the cloud of the dra- 
peries, and the fragrance of perfumed laces, and the bril- 
liancy of the staff officers’ uniforms had passed away, and 
left the soldiers alone in their Chambree. Those careless, 
cold words from a woman’s lips had cut him deeper than 
the matraque could have cut him, though it had bruised hi3 
loins and lashed his breast ; they showed all he had lost. 

“What a fool I am still!” he thought, as he made ki3 
way out of the barrack-room. “ I might have fairly for- 
gotten by this time that I ever had the rights of a gentle- 
man.” 

So the carvings had won him one warm heart and one 
keen pang that day; — the vivandiere forgave, the aristocrat 
stung him, by means of those snowy, fragile, artistic toys 
that he had shaped in lonely nights under canvas by ruddy 
picket-fires, beneath the shade of wild fig-trees, and in the 
stir and color of Bedouin encampments. 

“I must ask to be ordered out of the city,” he thought, 
as he pushed his way through the crowds of soldiers and 
civilians. “Here I get bitter, restless, impatient; here the 
past is always touching me on the shoulder; here I shall 
soon grow to regret, and to chafe, and to look back like 
any pining woman. Out yonder there, with no cares to 
think of but my horse and my troop, I am a soldier — and 
nothing else : so best. I shall be nothing else as long as I 
live. Pardieu, though! I don’t know -^vh at one wants 
better: it is a good life, as life goes. One must not turn 
compliments to great ladies, that is all; — not much of a 
deprivation there. The chessmen are the better for that ; 


308 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


her Maltese dog would have broken them all the first time 
it upset their table 1” 

He laughed a little as he went on smoking his brule- 
guele , the old carelessness, mutability, and indolent philos- 
ophies were with him still, and were still inclined to thrust 
away and glide from all pain as it arose. Though much 
of gravity and of thoughtfulness had stolen on him, much 
of insouciance remained ; and there were times when there 
was not a more reckless or a more nonchalant lion in alJ 
the battalions than “ Bel-a-faire-peur.” Under his gentle- 
ness there was “ wild blood ” in him still, and the wildness 
was not tamed by the fiery champagne-draught of the peril- 
ous, adventurous years he spent. 

“I wonder if I shall never teach the Black Hawk that 
he may strike his beak in once too far ?” he pondered, with 
a sudden darker, graver touch of musing ; and involunta- 
rily he stretched his arm out, and looked at the wrist, supple 
as Damascus steel, and at the muscles that were traced 
beneath the skin, as he thrust the sleeve up, clear, firm, 
and sinewy as any athlete’s. He doubted his countenance 
there, fast rein as he held all rebellion in, close shield as he 
bound to him against his own passions in the breastplate 
of a soldier’s first duty — obedience. 

He shook the thought off him as he would have shaken 
a snake. It had a terrible temptation — a temptation which 
he knew might any day overmaster him ; and Cecil, who all 
through his life had certain inborn instincts of honor, which 
served him better than most codes or creeds served their 
professors, was resolute to follow the military religion of 
obedience enjoined in the Service that had received him at 
his needs, and to give no precedent in his own person that 
could be fraught with dangerous, rebellious allurement for 
the untamed, chafing, red-hot spirits of his comrades, for 

whom he knew insubordination would be ruin and death 

whose one chance of reward, of success, and of a higher 
ambition, lay in their implicit subordination to their chiefs, 
and their continuous resistance of every rebellious impulse. 

Cecil had always thought very little of himself. 

In his most brilliant and pampered days he had always 
considered in his own heart that he was a graceless fellow, 
not worth his salt, and had occasionally wondered, in a 


THE IVORY SQUADRONS. 


309 


listless sort of way, why so useless a bagatelle d la mode 
as his own life was had ever been created. He thought 
much the same now; but following his natural instincts, 
which were always the instincts of a gentleman, and of a 
generous temper, he did, unconsciously, make his life of 
much value among its present comrades. 

His influence had done more to humanize the men he was 
associated with than any preachers or teachers could have 
done. The most savage and obscene brute in the ranks 
with him caught something gentler and better from the 
“ aristocrat. ” His refined habits, his serene temper, his 
kindly forbearance, his high instinctive honor, made them- 
selves felt imperceptibly, but surely; they knew that he was 
as fearless in war, as eager for danger as themselves, they 
knew that he was no saint, but loved the smile of women’s 
eyes, the flush of wines, and the excitation of gaming hazards 
as well as they did ; and hence his influence had a weight 
that probably a more strictly virtuous man’s would have 
strained for, and missed forever. The coarsest ruffian felt 
ashamed to make an utter beast of himself before the calm 
eyes of the patrician. The most lawless pratique felt a 
lie halt on his lips when- the contemptuous glance of his 
gentleman-comrade taught him that falsehood was pol- 
troonery. Blasphemous tongues learnt to rein in their 
filthiness when thi &“beau lion ” sauntered away from the 
picket-fire, on an icy night, to be out of hearing of their 
witless obscenities. More than once the weight of his 
arm and the slash of his saber had called them to account 
in fiery fashion for their brutality to women or their thefts 
from the country people, till they grew aware that “Bel-a- 
faire-peur” would risk having all their swords buried in 
him rather than stand by to see injustice done. 

And throughout his corps men became unconsciously 
gentler, juster, with a finer'sense of right and wrong, and 
less bestial modes of pleasure, of speech, and of habit, 
because he was among them. Moreover, the keen-eyed 
desperadoes who made up the chief sum of his comrades 
saw that he gave unquestioning respect to a chief who made 
his life a hell; and rendered unquestioning submission 
under affronts, tyrannies, and insults which, as they also 
saw, stung him to the quick, and tortured him as no physi- 


310 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


cal torture would have done — and the sight was not without 
a strong effect for good on them. They could tell that he 
suffered under these as they never suffered themselves, yet 
he bore them and did his duty with a self-control and 
patience they had never attained. 

Almost insensibly they grew ashamed to be beaten by 
him, and strove to grow like him as far as they could. 
They never knew him drunk, they never heard him swear, 
they never found him unjust, even to a poverty-stricken 
indigene, or brutal, even to a fille de joie. Insensibly his 
presence humanized them. Of a surety, the last part Bertie 
dreamed of playing was that of a teacher to any mortal 
thing — yet — here in Africa, it might reasonably be ques- 
tioned if a second Augustine or Francis Xavier would ever 
have done half the good among the devil-may-care Roumis 
that was wrought by the dauntless, listless, reckless soldier 
who followed instinctively the one religion which has no 
cant in its brave simple creed, and binds man to man in 
links that are true as steel — the religion of a gallant gentle- 
man’s loyalty and honor. 


CHAPTER XX. 

CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 

“ Corporal Victor, M. le Commandant desires you to 
present yourself at his campagne to-night, at ten precisely, 
with all your carvings; — above all, with the chessmen.” 

The swift sharp voice of a young officer of his regiment 
wakened Cecil from his musing, as he went on his way 
down the crowded, tortuous, stifling street. He had scarcely 
time to catch the sense of the words, and to halt, giving the 
salute, before the Chasseur’s skittish little Barbary mare 
had galloped past him, scattering the people right and left, 
knocking over a sweet-meat seller, upsetting a string of 
maize-laden mules, jostling a venerable marabout on to an 
impudent little grisette, and laming an old Moor as he 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACIIETTE. 


311 


tottered to his mosque, without any apology for any of the 
mischief, in the customary insolence, which makes “ Rounds’' 
. and “ Bureaucratic ” alike execrated by the indigenous 
populace with a detestation that the questionable benefits 
of civilized importations can do very little to counter- 
balance in the fiery breasts of the sons of the soil. 

Cecil involuntarily stood still. His face darkened. All 
orders that touched on the service, even where harshest 
and most unwelcome, he had taught himself to take without 
any hesitation, till he now scarcely felt the check of the 
steel curb ; but to be ordered thus like a lackey — to take 
his wares thus like a hawker ! 

“ Ah ma cantche! We are soldiers, not traders — aren’t 
we? You don’t like that, M. Victor? You are no peddler 
— eh ? And you think you would rather risk being court- 
martialed and shot, than take your ivory toys for the Black 
Hawk’s talon’s ?” 

Cecil glanced up in astonishment at the divination and 
translation of his thoughts, to encounter the bright falcon 
eyes of Cigarette looking down on him from a little ova. 
casement above, dark as pitch within, and whose embrasure, 
with its rim of gray stone coping, set off like a picture- 
frame, with a heavy background of unglazed Rembrandt 
shadow, the piquant head of the Friend of the Flag, with 
her pouting, scarlet, mocking lips, and her mischievous 
challenging smile, and her dainty little gold-banded forag- 
ing-cap set on curls as silken and jetty as any black Irish 
setter’s. 

“Bon jour, ma belle!” he answered, with a little weari- 
ness, lifting his fez to her with a certain sense of annoyance, 
that this young bohemian of the barracks, this child with 
her slang and her satire, should always be in his way like 
a shadow. 

“ Bon jour, mon brave!” returned Cigarette, contempt- 
uously. “We are not so ceremonious as all that in Algiers 1 
Good fellow, you should be a chamberlain, not a corporal. 
What fine manners, mon I)ieu!” 

She was incensed, and piqued, and provoked. She had 
been ready to forgive him because he carved so wonderfully, 
and sold the carvings for his comrade at the hospital; she 
was holding out the olive-branch after her own petulant 


312 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


fashion ; and she thought, if he had had any grace in him. 
he would have responded with some such florid compliment 
as those for which she was accustomed to box the ears of 
her admirers, and would have swung himself up to the 
coping, to touch, or at least try to touch, those sweet, fresh, 
crimson lips of hers, that were like a half-opened damask 
rose. Modesty is apt to go to the wall in camps, and poor 
little Cigarette’s notions of the great passion were very 
simple, rudimentary, and, certes, in no way coy. How 
should they be? She had tossed about with the army, 
like one of the tassels to their standards, blowing which- 
ever way the breath of war floated her, and had experienced, 
or thought she had experienced, as many affaires as the 
veriest Don Juan among them, though her heart had never 
been much concerned in them, but had beaten scarce a shade 
quicker, if a lunge in a duel, or a shot from an Indigene, 
had pounced off with her hero of the hour to Hades. 

“Fine manners!” echoed Cecil, with a smile: “my poor 
child, have you been so buffeted about that you have never 
been treated with commonest courtesy ?” 

'‘Whew!” cried the little lady, blowing a puff of smoke 
down on him. “ None of your pity for me, my ci-devant! 
Buffeted about ? Nom du diable ! do you suppose anybody 
ever did anything with me that I didn’t choose ? If you 
had as much power as I have in the army, Chateauroy 
would not send for you to sell your toys like a peddler. You 
are a slave 1 I am a sovereign !” 

With which she tossed back her graceful, spirited head, 
as though the gold band of her cap were the gold band of 
a diadem. She was very proud of her station in the Army 
of Africa, and glorified her privileges with all a child’s 
vanity. 

He listened, amused with her boastful supremacy; but 
the last words touched him with a certain pang just in that 
moment. He felt like a slave — a slave who must obey his 
tyrant, or go out and die like a dog. 

“Well, yes,” he said, slowly, “I am a slave, I fear. I 
wish a Bedouin flissa would cut my thralls in two.” 

He spoke jestingly, but there was a tinge of sadness in 
the words that touched Cigarette’s changeful temper to 
contrition, and filled her with the same compassion and 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 


313 


wonder at him that she had felt when the ivory wreaths and 
crucifixes had laid in her hands. She knew she had been 
ungenerous — a crime dark as night in the sight of the little 
chivalrous soldier. 

“Tiens!” she said, softly and waywardly, winding her 
way aright with that penetration and tact which, however 
unsexed in other things, Cigarette had kept thoroughly 
feminine. “ That was but an idle word of mine : forgive it, 
and forget it. You are not a slave when you fight in the 
fantasias. Morbleu ! they say to see you kill a man is 
beautiful — so workmanlike ! And you would go out and 
be shot to-morrow, rather than sell your honor, or stain it 
— eh ? Bah ! while you know they should cut your heart 
out rather than make you tell a lie, or betray a comrade, 
you are no slave, my galonne; you have the best freedom 
of all. Take a glass of champagne ? Prut-tut 1 how you 
look I Oh, the demoisellles, with the silver necks, are not 
barrack drink, of course; but I drink champagne always 
myself. This is M. le Prince’s. He knows I only take the 
best brands.” 

With which Cigarette, leaning down from her casement, 
whose sill was about a foot above his head, tendered her 
peace-offering in a bottle of Cliquot, three of which, packed 
in her knapsack, she had carried off from the luncheon-table 
of a Russian Prince who was touring through Algiers, and 
who had half lost his Grand Ducal head after the bewitch- 
ing, dauntless, capricious, unattacliable, unpurchasable, and 
coquettish little fire-eater of the Spahis, who treated him 
with infinitely more insolence and indifference than she 
would show to some battered old veteran, or some worn-out 
old dog, who had passed through the great Ivabaila raids 
and battles. 

“ You will go to your Colonel’s to-night ?” she said 
questioningly, as he drank the champagne, and thanked 
her — for he saw the spirit in which the gift was tendered — 
as he leaned against the half-ruined Moorish wall, with its 
blue and white striped awning spread over both their heads 
in the little street whose crowds, chatter, thousand eyes, 
and incessant traffic no way troubled Cigarette, who had 
talked argot to monarchs undaunted, and who had been 
one of the chief sights in a hundred grand reviews ever 

27 


314 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


since she bad been perched on a gun-carriage at five years 
old, and paraded with a troop of horse artillery in the 
Champ de Mars, as having gone through the whole of 
Bugeaud’s campaign, at which parade, by-the-way, being 
tendered sweetmeats by a famous General’s wife, Cigarette 
had made the immortal reply, in lisping sabir : “Madame, 
mes bonbons sont des boulets /”* 

She repeated her question imperiously, as Cecil kept 
silent : “You will go to-night?” 

He shrugged his shoulders. He did not care to discuss 
his Colonel’s orders with this pretty little Bacchante. 

“ Oh, a chief’s command, you know ” 

“ A fico for a chief 1” retorted Cigarette impatiently. 
“ Why don’t you say the truth ? You are thinking you 
will disobey, and risk the rest!” 

“ Well, why not ? I grant his right in barrack and 
field, but ” 

He spoke rather to himself than her, and his thoughts, 
as he spoke, went back to the scene of the morning. He 
felt, with a romantic impulse that he smiled at even as it 
passed over him, that he would rather have half a dozen 
muskets fired at him in the death-sentence of a mutineer 
than meet again the glance of those proud azure eyes 
sweep over him, in their calm indifference to a private ol 
Chasseurs, their calm ignorance that he could be wounded 
or be stung. 

“ But ?” echoed Cigarette, leaning out of her oval hole, 
perched in the quaint, gray, Moresco wall, parti-colored 
with broken encaustics of varied hues. “Chut, bon came- 
rade! that little word has been the undoing of the world 
ever since the world began. ‘ But ’ is a blank cartridge, 
and never did anything but miss fire yet. Shoot dead, or 
don’t aim at all, whichever you like ; but never make a 
coup manque f with ‘ but 1’ So you won’t obey Ch&teauroy 
in this ?” 

He was silent again. He would not answer falsely, and 
he did not care to say his thoughts to her. 

“ ‘No,’ ’’pursued Cigarette, translating his silence at her 
fancy, “you say to yourself, ‘I am an aristocrat — I will 


* Madame, my sweetmeats are bullets t 


f False stroke 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 315 

not be ordered in this thing,’ — you say. ‘I am a good 
soldier : I will not be sent for like a hawker,’ — you say. 
‘I was noble once : I will show my blood at last, if I die I’ 
All ! — you say that !” 

lie laughed a little as he looked up at her. 

“Hot exactly that, but something as foolish perhaps. 
Are you a witch, my pretty one V 9 

“ Whoever doubted it, except you ?” 

She looked one, in truth, whom few men could resist, 
bending to him out of her owl’s nest, with the flash of the 
sun under the blue awning brightly catching the sunny 
brown of her soft cheek and the cherry bloom of her lips, 
arched, pouting, and coquette. She set her teeth sharply, 
and muttered a hot, heavy sacr6, or even something worse, 
as she saw that his eyes had not even remained on her, but 
were thoughtfully looking down the checkered light and 
color of the street. She was passionate, she was vain, she 
was wayward, she was fierce as a little velvet leopard, as 
a handsome, brilliant plumaged hawk ; she had all the 
faults, as she had all the virtues, of the thorough Celtic 
race ; and, for the moment, she had an instinct, fiery, ruth- 
less, and full of hate, to draw the pistol out of her belt, 
and teach him with a shot, crash through heart or brain, 
that girls who were “unsexed” could keep enough of the 
woman in them not*to be neglected with impunity, and 
could lose enough of it to be able to avenge the negligence 
by a summary vendetta. But she w r as a haughty little 
condottiere in her fashion. She would not ask for what 
was not offered her, nor give a rebuke that might be traced 
to mortification. She only set her two rosebud lips in as 
firm a line of wrath and scorn as ever Caesar’s or Napo- 
leon’s moulded themselves into, and spoke in the curt, im- 
perious, generalissimo fashion with which Cigarette beforo 
now had rallied a demoralized troop, reeling drunk and 
mad away from a razzia. 

“I am a witch ! That is, I can put two and two to- 
gether, and read men, though I don’t read the alphabet. 
Well, one reading is a good deal rarer than the other. So 
you mean to disobey the Hawk to-night ? I like you for 
that. But listen here — did you ever hear them talk of 
Marquise ?” 


31G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ No !” 

“Parbleu!” swore the vivandihre in her wrath, “you 
look on at a bamboula as if it were only a bear-cub danc- 
ing, and can only give one ‘yes’ and ‘no,’ as if one were 
a drummer-boy. Bah ! are those your Paris courtesies ?” 

“ Forgive me, ma belle! I thought you called yourself 
our comrade, and would have no ‘ fine manners.’ There is 
no knowing how to please you.” 

He might have pleased her simply and easily enough if 
he had only looked up with a shade of interest to that 
most picturesque picture, bright as a pastel portrait that 
was hung above him in the old tumble-down Moorish stone- 
work. But his thoughts were with other things ; and a 
love scene with this fantastic young Amazon did not at- 
tract him. The warm, ripe, mellow little wayside cherry 
hung directly in his path, with the sun on its bloom, and 
the free wind tossing it merrily; but it had no charm for 
him. He was musing rather on that costly, delicate, bril- 
liant-hued, hothouse blossom that could only be reached 
down by some rich man’s hand, and grew afar on heights 
where never winter chills, nor summer tan, could come too 
rudely on it. 

“ Come, tell me what is Marquise ? — a kitten ?” he went 
on, leaning his arm still on the sill of her embrasure, and 
willing to coax her out of her anger. 

“ A kitten 1” echoed Cigarette contemptuously. “You 
think me a child, I suppose ?” 

“ Surely you are not far off it ?” 

“Mon Dieu ! why, I was never a child in my life,” re- 
torted Cigarette, waxing sunny-tempered and confidential 
again, while she perched herself, like some gay-feathered 
mocking-bird on a branch, on the window-sill itself. 
“ When I was two, I used to be beaten like a Turco that 
pawns his musket ; when I was three, I used to scrape up 
the cigar ends the officers dropped about to sell them 
again for a bit of black bread ; when I was four, I knew 
all about Philippe Durron’s escape from Beylick, and bit 
my tongue through, to say nothing, when my mother 
flogged me with a tringlo’s mule-whip, because I would not 
tell, that she might tell again at the Bureau, and get the 
reward. A child ? — diantre ! before I was two feet high 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 317 

I had winged my first Arbi. He stole a rabbit I was 
roasting. Presto I how quick he dropped it when my ball 
broke his wrist like a twig.” 

And the Friend of the Flag laughed §ayly at the recol- 
lection, as at the best piece of mirth with which memory 
could furnish her. 

“But you asked about Marquise ? Well, he was what 
you are, a hawk among carrion crows, a gentleman in the 
ranks. Dieu 1 how handsome he was I Nobody ever knew 
his real name, but they thought he was of Austrian breed, 
and we called him Marquise because he was so womanish 
white in his skin and so dainty in all his ways. Just like 
you I Marquise could fight, fight like a hundred devils ; 
and — pouf! — how proud he was; — very much like you al- 
together 1 Now, one day something went wrong in the 
exercise-ground. Marquise was not to blame, but they 
thought he was ; and an adjutant struck him — flick, flack, 
like that — across the face with a riding-switch. Marquise 
had bis bayonet fixed — he belonged to the Turcos — and 
before we knew what was up, crash the blade went through 
— through the breast-bone, and out at the spine — and the 
adjutant fell as dead as a cat, with the blood spouting out 
like a fountain. 1 1 come of a great race, that never took 
insult without giving, back death,’ was all that Marquise 
said when they seized him and brought him to judgment ; 
and he would never say of what race that was. They shot 
him — ah, bah ! discipline must be kept — and I saw him 
with five great wounds in his chest, and his beautiful golden 
hair all soiled with the sand and the powder, lying there by 
the open -grave, that they threw him into as if he were 
offal; and we never knew more of him than that.” 

Cigarette’s radiant laugh had died, and her careless 
voice had sunk, over the latter words. As the little viva- 
cious brunette told the tale of a nameless life, it took its 
eloquence from her, simple and brief as her speech was, and 
it owned a deeper pathos because the reckless young Bac- 
chante of the As de Pique grew grave one moment while 
she told it. Then, grave still, she leaned her brown, bright 
face nearer down from her oval hole in the wall. 

“ Now,” she whispered very low, “ if you mutiny once, 

27 * 


318 


UNDER TWO FLAGS 


they will shoot you just like Marquise, and you will die 
just as silent, like him.” 

“ Well,” he answered her slowly, “why not ? Death is 
no great terror ; Tt risk it every day for the sake of a com- 
mon soldier’s rations, why should I not chance it for the 
sake and in the defense of my honor ?” 

“ Bah ! men sell their honor for their daily bread all the 
world over!” said Cigarette with the satire that had treble 
raciness from the slang in which she clothed it. “ But it 
is not you alone. See here — one example set on your 
part, and half your regiment will mutiny too. It is bitter 
work to obey the Black Hawk, and if you give the signal 
of revolt, three parts of your comrades will join you. Now 
what will that end in, beau lion — eh ?” 

“ Tell me — you are a soldier yourself, you say.” 

“Yes, I am a soldier !” said Cigarette between her tight- 
set teeth, while her eyes lightened, and her voice sank down 
into a whisper that had a certain terrible meaning in it, like 
the first dropping of the scattered opening shots in the 
distance before a great battle commences ; “ and I have seen 
war, not holiday war, but war in earnest — war when men 
fall like hailstones, and tear like tigers, and choke like mad 
dogs with their throats full of blood and sand ; when the 
gun-carriage wheels go crash over the writhing limbs, and 
the horses charge full gallop over the living faces, and the 
hoofs beat out the brains before death has stunned them 
senseless. Oh, yes 1 I am a soldier, and I will tell you 
one thing I have seen. I have seen soldiers mutiny, a 
squadron of them, because they hated their chief and loved 
two of their sous-officiers ; and I have seen tin? end of it 
all — a few hundred men, blind and drunk with despair, at 
bay against as many thousands, and walled in with four lines 
of steel and artillery, and fired on from a score of cannon- 
mouths — volley on volley, like the thunder — till not one 
living man was left, and there was only a shapeless, heav- 
ing, moaning mass, with the black smoke over all. That 
is what I have seen ; you will not make me see it again ?” 

Her face was very earnest, very eloquent, very dark, 
and tender with thought ; there was a vein of grave, even 
of intense feeling, that ran through the significant words 
to which tone and accent lent far more meaning than lay 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 319 

in their mere phrases ; the little bohemian lost her inso- 
lence when she pleaded for her “children,” her comrades ; 
and the mischievous pet of the camp never treated lightly 
what touched the France that she lovecl, the France thai 
alone of all things in her careless life she held in honor 
and reverence. 

“You will not make me see it again?” she said, once 
more leaning out, with her eyes, that were like a brown 
brook sparkling deep yet bright in the sun, fixed on him. 
“ They would rise at your bidding, and they would be 
mowed down like corn. You will not ?” 

“ Never 1 I give you my word.” 

The promise was from his heart. He would have en- 
dured any indignity, any outrage, rather than have drawn 
into ruin, through him, the fiery, fearless, untutored lives 
of the men who marched, and slept, and rode, and fought, 
and lay in the light of the picket-fires, and swept down 
through the hot sand storms on to the desert foe by his 
side. Cigarette stretched out her hand to him — that tiny 
brown hand, which, small though it was, had looked so 
burnt and so hard beside the delicate, fairy ivory carvings 
of his workmanship — stretched it out with a frank, win- 
ning, childlike, soldierlike grace, 

il &est ga } tu es bon soldat ! ”* 

He bent over the hand she held to his in the courtesy 
natural with him to all her sex, and touched it lightly with 
his lips. 

“ Thank you, my little comrade,” he said simply, with 
the graver thought still on him that her relation and her 
entreaty had evoked, “you have given me a lesson that I 
shall not be quick to forget.” 

Cigarette was the wildest little bacchanal that ever pi- 
rouetted for the delight of half a score of soldiers in their 
shirt-sleeves and half-drunk ; she was the most reckless 
coquette that ever made the roll-call of her lovers range 
from prince-marshals to ploughboy conscripts ; she had 
flirted as far and wide as the butterfly flirts with the blos- 
soms it flutters on to through the range of a summer-day; 


* That’s right! You are a true soldier. 


320 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


she took kisses, if the giver of them were handsome, as 
readily as a child takes sweetmeats at Mardi Gras ; and 
of feminine honor, feminine scruples, feminine delicacy, 
knew nothing save by such very dim, fragmentary instincts 
as nature still planted in scant growth amid the rank soil 
and the pestilent atmosphere of camp-life. Her eyes had 
never sunk, her face had never flushed, her heart had never 
panted for the boldest or the wildest wooer of them all, 
from M. le Due’s Lauzun-esque blandishments to Pouflfer- 
de-Rire’s or Miou-Miou’s rough overtures; she had the 
coquetry of her nation with the audacity of a boy. Now 
only, for the first time, Cigarette colored hotly at the grave, 
graceful, distant salute, so cold and so courteous, which 
was offered her in lieu of the rude and boisterous familiar- 
ities to which she was accustomed ; and drew her hand 
away with what was, to the shame of her soldierly hardi- 
hood and her barrack tutelage, very nearly akin to an im- 
pulse of shyness. 

“Dam! Ne me donnez de la gabatine!* I am not a 
court lady, bon-zig!” she cried hastily, almost petulantly, 
to cover the unwonted and unwelcome weakness ; while, to 
make good the declaration and revindicate her military 
renown, she balanced herself lightly on the stone ledge of 
her oval hole, and sprang, with a young wildcat’s easy, 
vaulting leap, over his head, and over the heads of the 
people beneath, on to the ledge of the house opposite, a 
low-built wine-shop, whose upper story nearly touched 
the leaning walls of the old Moorish buildings in which 
she had been perched. The crowd in the street below 
looked up amazed and aghast at that bound from casement 
to casement as she flew over their heads like a blue-and- 
scarlet-winged bird of Oran ; but they laughed as they saw 
who it was. 

“ It is Cigarette !” growled a Turco Indigene. “ Ah-lia! 
the devil, for a certainty, must have been her father 1” 

“ To be sure !” cried the Friend of the Flag, looking 
from her elevation ; “ he is a very good father, too, and 
I don’t tease him like his sons the priests 1 But I have 


* “ Stuff ! Don’t humbug me 1” 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 


321 


told him to take you , Ben Arsli, the next time you are 
stripping a dead body; so look out — he won’t have to wait 
long.” 

The diseomfited Indigene hustled his way, with many 
an oath, through the laughing crowd as best he might, and 
Cigarette, with an airy piroutte on the wine-shop’s roof 
that would have done honor to any opera boards, and wa3 
executed as carelessly, twenty feet above earth, as if she 
had been a pantomime-dancer all her days, let herself down 
by the awning, hand over hand like a little mousse from 
the harbor, jumped on to a forage- wagon that was just 
passing full trot down the street, and disappeared, stand- 
ing on the piles of hay, and singing to the driving trin» 
glos ’ unutterable delight the stanzas of Beranger’s “ Infi - 
delites de Lisette her lithe, slender, miniature form, with 
its flash of gold on the breast, and its strip of rich scarlet 
in the fluttering sash, rising out against the blue and 
burning sky, the glare of the white walls, and the dusky 
glow and movement of the ebbing and flowing crowd. 

Cecil looked after her with a certain touch of pity for 
her in him. 

“What a gallant boy is spoilt in that little Amazon !” 
he thought ; the quick flush of her face, the quick with- 
drawal of her hand, he had not noticed ; she had not much 
interest for him — scarcely any, indeed, — save that he saw 
she was pretty, with a mignonne mischievous face, that all 
the sun-tan of Africa and all the wild life of the Caserne 
could not harden or debase. But he was sorry a child so 
bright and so brave should be turned into three parts a 
trooper as she was, should have been tossed up on the 
scum and filth of the lowest barrack life, and should be 
doomed in a few years’ time to become the yellow, battered, 
foul-mouthed, vulture-eyed camp-follower that premature 
old age would surely render the darling of the tricolor, the 
pythoness of the As de Pique. 

Cigarette was making scorn of her doom of Sex, danc- 
ing it down, drinking it down, laughing it down, burning 
it out in tobacco fumes, drowning it in trembling cascades 
of wine, trampling it to dust under the cancan by her little 
brass-bound boots, mocking it away with her slang jests, and 
her Theresa songs, and her devil-may-care audacities, till 
V 


322 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


there wa5j scarce a trace of it left in this prettiest and 
wildest little scamp of all the Army of Africa. But strive 
to kill it how she would, her sex would have its revenge 
one day and play Nemesis to her. 

She was bewitching now — bewitching, though she had 
no witchery for him, in her youth. But when the bloom 
should leave her brown cheeks, and the laughter die out 
of her lightning glance, the womanhood she had defied 
would assert itself, and avenge itself, and be hideous in the 
sight of the men who now loved the tinkling of those 
little spurred feet, and shouted with applause to hear the 
reckless barrack-blasphemies ring their mirth from that 
fresh mouth which was now like a bud from a damask rose 
branch, though even now it steeped itself in wine, and sul- 
lied itself with oaths, and seared itself with smoke, and 
had never been touched from its infancy with any kiss that 
was innocent, not even with its mother’s. 

And there was a deep tinge of pity for her in Cecil’s 
thoughts as he watched her out of sight, and then strolled 
across to the cafe opposite to finish his cigar beneath its 
orange-striped awning. The child had been flung upward, 
a little straw floating in the gutter of Paris iniquities ; a 
little foam-bell bubbling on the sewer waters of barrack- 
vice ; the stick had been her teacher, the baggage-wagon 
her cradle, the camp-dogs her play-fellows, the caserne * 
oaths her lullaby, the guidons f her sole guiding-stars, the 
razzia\ her sole fete day; it was little marvel that the 
bright, bold, insolent little Friend of the Flag had nothing 
left of her sex save a kitten’s mischief and a coquette’s 
archness. It said much rather for the straight, fair, sun- 
lit instincts of the untaught nature that Cigarette had 
gleaned, even out of such a life, two virtues that she 
would have held by to the death, if tried : a truthfulness 
that would have scorned a lie as only fit for cowards, and 
a loyalty that cleaved to France as a religion. 

Cecil thought that a gallant boy was spoiled in this 
eighteen-year old brunette of a campaigner ; he might 
have gone further, and said that a hero was lost. 


* Barrack. 


f Standards. 


£ Raid. 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 323 

“Voila!” said Cigarette between her little teeth. 

She stood in the glittering Algerine night, brilliant with 
a million stars, and balmy with a million flowers, before 
the bronze trellised gate of the villa on the Sahel, where 
Chateauroy, when he was not on active service’ — which 
chanced rarely, for he was one of the finest soldiers and 
most daring chiefs in Africa — indemnified himself with the 
magnificence that his private fortune enabled him to enjoy, 
for the unsparing exertions and the rugged privations that 
he always shared willingly with the lowest of his soldiers. 
It was the grandest trait in the man’s character that he 
utterly scorned the effeminacy which many commanders 
provided for their table, their comfort, and their gratifica- 
tion while campaigning, and would commonly neither 
take himself nor allow to his officers any more indulgence 
on the march than his troopers themselves enjoyed. But 
his villa on the Sahel was a miniature palace ; it had 
formerly been the harem of a great Rais, and the gardens 
were as enchanting as the interior was, if something florid, 
still as elegant as Paris art and Paris luxury could make 
it ; for ferocious as the Black Hawk was in war, and well 
as he loved the chase and the slaughter, he did not dis- 
dain, when he had whetted beak and talons to satiety, to 
smooth his ruffled plumage in downy nests and under ca- 
ressing hands. 

To-night the windows*of the pretty, low, snow-white, far- 
stretching building were lighted and open, and through 
the wilderness of cactus, myrtle, orange, citron, fuschsia, 
and a thousand flowers that almost buried it under their 
weight of leaf and blossom, a myriad of lamps were gleam- 
ing like so many glow-worms beneath the foliage, while 
from a cedar grove some slight way farther out, the melodies 
and overtures of the best military bands in Algiers came 
mellowed, though not broken, by the distance and the fall 
of the bubbling fountains. Cigarette looked and listened, 
and her gay, brown face grew duskily warm with wrath. 

“ Ah, bah 1” she muttered as she pressed her pretty lips 
to the lattice-work. “ The men die like murrained sheep 
in the hospital, and get sour bread tossed to them as if 
they were pigs, and are thrashed if they pawn their mus- 
kets for a stoup of drink when their throats are as dry as 


324 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the desert — and you live like a coq en pale!* Morbleu I 
what fools the people are to tight, and toil, and get their 
limbs broken, and have their brains dashed out by spent 
balls, that M. le Mareehal may send home a grand story 
with liis own name flaring in letters a yard long on the 
placards, and M. le Colonel gives his fetes with stars and 
ribbons on his breast, while those who won the battle lie 
rotting in the sand !” 

Cigarette was a resolute little democrat ; she had loaded 
the carbines behind the barricade in an emeute in Paris 
before she was ten years old, and was not seldom in the 
perplexity of conflicting creeds when her loyalty to the 
tricolor and the guidons smote with a violent clash on her 
love for the populace and their liberty. She was given, 
however, usually to reconciling the dilemma with all her 
sex’s illogical ingenuity, and so far thoroughly carried 
out her republicanism that she boxed a Prince’s ear with- 
out ceremony when one tried to subjugate her, and never 
by any chance veiled the sun of her smiles to her “ chil- 
dren,” the troopers — not even when she was tired to death 
after a burning march across leagues on leagues of locust- 
wasted country, or had spent half the night, after a skir- 
mish, dressing wounds, soothing fever, seeking out the 
dying men who lay scattered on the outskirts of the field 
of carnage, with a magic, and a sweetness, and a patience 
that seemed rather fitting for the gentle Soeurs Grises 
than for the wayward, mischievous, insolent young reveler 
of the As de Pique. 

She looked a moment longer through the gilded scrolb 
work; then, as she had done once before, thrust her pistols 
well within her sash that they should not catch upon the 
boughs, and pushing herself through the prickly cactus 
hedge, impervious to anything save herself or a Barbary 
marmoset, twisted with marvelous ingenuity through the 
sharp-pointed leaves, and the close barriers of spines, and 
launched herself with inimitable dexterity on to the other 
side of the cacti. Cigarette had too often played a game 
at spying and reconnoitering for her regiments, and played 
it with a cleverness that distanced even the most ruse of 


* Iu clover. 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 325 

the Zephyrs, not to be able to do just whatever she chose, 
in taking the way she liked, and lurking unseen at discretion. 

She crossed the breadth of the grounds under the heavy 
shade of arbutus-trees with a hare’s fleetness, and stood a 
second looking at the open windows and the terraces that 
lay before them, brightly lighted by the summer moon and 
by the lamps that sparkled among the shrubs. Then down 
she dropped, as quickly, as lightly, as a young setter down 
charging among the ferns, into a shower of rhododendrons, 
whose rose and lilac blossoms shut her wholly within them 
like a fairy inclosed in bloom. The good fairy of one life 
there she was assuredly, though she might be but a devil- 
may-care, audacious, careless little feminine Belphegor and 
military Asmodeus. 

“ Ah I” she said, quickly and sharply, with a deep-drawn 
breath. The single ejaculation was at once a menace, a 
tenderness, a whirlwind of rage, a volume of disdain, a 
world of pity. It was intensely French, and the whole 
nature of Cigarette was in it. 

Yet all she saw was a small and brilliant group saunter- 
ing^o and fro before the open windows, after dinner, list- 
ening to the bands, which, through dinner, had played to 
them, and laughing low and softly ; and, at some distance 
from them, beneath the shade of a cedar, the figure of a 
Corporal of Chasseurs, calm, erect, motionless, as though he 
were the figure of a soldier cast in bronze. The scene was 
simple enough, though very picturesque ; but it told, by 
its vivid force of contrast, a whole history to Cigarette. 

“A true soldier !” she muttered, where she lay among 
the rhododendrons, while her eyes grew very soft, as she 
gave the highest word of praise that her whole range of 
language held. “A true soldier ! How he keeps his prom- 
ise 1 But it must be bitter !” 

She looked awhile, very wistfully, at the Chasseur, where 
he stood under the Lebanon boughs ; then her glance swept 
bright as a hawk’s over the terrace, and lighted with a 
prescient hatred on the central form of all — a woman’s. 
There were two other great ladies there ; but she passed 
them, and darted with unerring instinct on that proud, fair, 
patrician head, with its haughty stag-like carriage and the 
crown of its golden hair. 


23 


326 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Cigarette had seen grandes dames by the thousand, 
though never very close; seen them in Paris, when they 
came to look on at a ghmd review ; seen them in their 
court attire, when the Guides had filled the Carrousel on 
some palace ball night, and lined the Cour des Princes, 
and she had bewitched the officers of the guard into letting 
her pass in to see the pageantry. But she had never felt 
for those grandes dames anything save a considerably con- 
temptuous indifference. She had looked on them pretty 
much as a war-worn, powder-tried veteran looks on the 
curled dandy of some fashionable, home-staying corps. 
She had never realized the difference betwixt them and her- 
self, save in so far as she thought them useless butterflies, 
worth nothing at all, and laughed as she triumphantly 
remembered how she could shoot a man like any Tirailleur, 
and break in a colt like any rough rider. 

Now, for the first time, the sight of one of those aristo- 
crats smote her with a keen hot sting of heart-burning 
jealousy. Now, for the first time, the little Friend of the 
Flag looked at all the nameless graces of rank with an 
envy that her sunny, gladsome, generous nature had never 
before been touched with — with a sudden perception, quick 
as thought, bitter as gall, wounding, and swift, and poignant, 
of what this womanhood, that he had said she herself had 
lost, might be in its highest and purest shape. 

“Unsexed — he said I was unsexed,” she mused, while 
her teeth clinched on the ruby fullness of her lips, and her 
heart swelled, half with impotent rage, half with uncon- 
fessed pain. For the first time, looking on this imperial 
foreign beauty, sweeping so slowly and so idly along there 
in the Algerian starlight, she understood all that he had 
missed, all that he had meant, when he had used that single 
word, for which she had vowed on him her vengeance and 
the vengeance of the Army of Africa. 

“If those are the women that he knew before he came 
here, I do not wonder that he never cared to watch even 
my bamboula ,” was the latent, unacknowledged thought 
that was so cruel to her : the consciousness — which forced 
itself in on her, while her eyes jealously followed the per- 
fect grace of the one in whom instinct had found her rival 
~-that, while she had been so proud of her recklessness, 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 321 

and her devilry, and her trooper’s slang, and her deadly 
skill as a shot, she had only been something very worthless, 
something very lightly held by those who liked her for a 
ribald jest, and a guinguette dance, and a Spahis’ supper 
of headlong riot and drunken mirth. 

The mood did not last. She was too brave, too fiery, 
too dauntless, too untamed. The dusky angry flush upon 
her face grew deeper, and the passion gathered more 
stormily in her eyes, while she felt the pistol butts in her 
sash, and laughed low to herself, where she lay stretched 
under her flowery nest. 

“Bah ! she would faint, I dare say, at the mere sight of 
these,” she thought, with her old disdain, “and would stand 
fire no more than a gazelle ! They are only made for sum- 
mer-day weather, those dainty, gorgeous, silver pheasants. 
A breath of war, a touch of tempest, would soon beat them 
down — crash 1 — with all their proud crests drooping 1” 

Like many another, Cigarette underrated what she had 
no knowledge of, and depreciated an antagonist the meas- 
ure of whose fence she had no power to gauge. 

Crouched there among the rhododendrons, she lay as still 
as a mouse, moving nearer and nearer, though none would 
have told that so much as a lizard even stirred under the 
blossoms, until her ear, quick and unerring as an Indian’s, 
could detect the sense of the words spoken by that group, 
which so aroused all the hot ire of her warrior’s soul and 
her democrat’s impatience. Chateauroy himself was bend- 
ing his fine dark head toward the patrician on whom her 
instinct of sex had fastened her hatred. 

“You expressed your wish to see my Corporal’s little 
sculptures again, madame,” he was murmuring now, as 
Cigarette got close enough under her flower shadows to 
catch the sense of the words. “ To hear was to obey with 
me. lie waits your commands yonder.” 

“ Mille tonneres ! It was you , was it, brought him here ?” 
muttered the Friend of the Flag to herself, with the passion 
in her burning more hotly against that “ silver pheasant,” 
whose delicate train was sweeping the white marbles of 
Chateauroy’s terraces, and whose reply, “ with fashion, not 
with feeling, softly freighted,” she lost, though she could 
guess what it had been, when a lackey crossed the lawn, 


328 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and summoned the Chasseur from his waiting-place beneath 
the cedars. 

Cecil obeyed, passed up the terrace stairs, and stood 
before his Colonel, giving the salute; the shade of some 
acacias still fell across him, while the party he fronted 
were in all the glow of a full Algerian moon, and of the 
thousand lamps among the belt of flowers and trees. Cigar- 
ette gave another sharp deep-drawn breath, and lay as mute 
and motionless as she had done before then, among the 
rushes of some dried brook’s bed, scanning a hostile camp, 
when the fate of a handful of French troops had rested on 
her surety and her caution. 

Chateauroy spoke with a carelessness as of a man to a 
dog, turning to his Corporal. 

“Victor, Madame la Princesse honors you with the 
desire to see your toys again. Spread them out.” 

The savage authority of his general speech was soft- 
ened for sake of his guest’s presence, but there was a covert 
tone in the words that made Cigarette murmur to herself: 

“If he forget his promise, I will forgive him 1” 

Cecil had not forgotten it ; neither had he forgotten the 
lesson that this fair arislocrate had read him in the morn- 
ing. He saluted his chief again, set the chessbox down 
upon the ledge of the marble balustrade, and stood silent, 
without once glancing at the fair and haughty face that was 
more brilliant still in the African starlight than it had been 
in the noon sun of the Chasseurs’ Chambree . Courtesy 
was forbidden him as insult from a corporal to a nobly born 
beauty; he no more quarreled with the decree than with 
other inevitable consequences, inevitable degradations, that 
, followed on his entrance as a private under the French flag. 
He had been used to the impassable demarkations of Caste, 
he did not dispute them more now that he was without, 
than he had done when within, their magic pale. 

The carvings were passed from hand to hand as the Mar- 
quis’s six or eight guests, listlessly willing to be amused in 
the warmth of the evening after their dinner, occupied them- 
selves with the ivory chess armies, cut with a skill and 
a finish worthy a Roman studio. Praise enough was 
awarded to the art, but none of them remembered the artist 
who stood apart, grave, calm, with a certain serene dignity 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 32$ 

that could not be degraded because others chose to treat 
him as the station he filled gave them fit right to do. 

Only one glanced at him with a touch of wondering pity, 
softening her pride ; she who had rejected the gift of those 
mimic squadrons. 

“You were surely a sculptor, once ?” she asked him with 
that graceful distaut kindness which she might have shown 
some Arab outcast. 

“Never, madame.” 

“ Indeed 1 Then who taught you such exquisite art V 1 

“It cannot claim to be called art, madame.” 

She looked at him with an increased interest: the accent 
of his voice told her that this m^n, whatever he might bo 
now, had once been a gentleman. 

“ Oh, yes ; it is perfect of its kind. Who was your 
master in it ?” 

“A common teacher, madame — Necessity.” 

There was a very sweet gleam of compassion in the luster 
of her dark dreaming eyes. 

“ Does necessity often teach so well ?” 

“In the ranks of our army, madame, I think it does;’ 
—often indeed much better.” 

Chateauroy had stood by and heard, with as much impa- 
tience as he cared to show before guests whose rank was 
precious to the man who had still weakness enough to be 
ashamed that his father’s brave and famous life had first 
been cradled under the thatch roof of a little posting-house. 

“Victor knows that neither he nor his men have any 
right to waste their time on such trash,” he said carelessly ; 
“but the truth is they love the canteen so well that they 
will do anything to add enough to their pay to buy brandy.” 

She whom he had called Madame la Princesse looked 
with a doubting surprise at the sculptor of the white Arab 
King she held. 

“ That man does not carve for brandy,” she thought. 

“It must be a solace to many a weary hour in the bar- 
racks to be able to produce such beautiful trifles as these,” 
she said aloud. “ Surely you encourage such pursuits, 
monsieur ?” 

“ Not I,” said Chateauroy, with a dash of his camp tone 
28 * 


330 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


that he could not withhold. “ There are but two arts or 
virtues for a trooper to my taste — fighting and obedience.” 

“ You should be in the Russian service, M. de Chateau- 
roy,” said the lady with a smile, that, slight as it was, made 
the Marquis’s eyes flash fire. 

“Almost I wish I had been,” he answered her; “men 
are made to keep their grades there, and privates who 
think themselves fine gentlemen receive the lash they merit.” 

. “How he hates his Corporal!” thought Miladi, while 
she laid aside the White King once more. 

“ Nay,” interposed Chateauroy, recovering his moment- 
ary self-abandonment, “ since you like the bagatelles, do me 
honor enough to keep them.” 

“ Oh, no, I offered your soldier his own price for them 
this morning, and he refused any.” 

Chateauroy swung round. 

“ Ah, sacripant! you dared refuse your bits of ivory when 
you were honored by an offer for them.” 

Cecil stood silent; his eyes met his chiefs steadily; 
Chateauroy had seen that look when his Chasseur had 
bearded him in the solitude of his tent, and demanded back 
the Pearl of the Desert. 

The Princess glanced at both; then she stooped her 
elegant head slightly to the Marquis. 

“Do not blame your Corporal unjustly through me, I 
pray you. He refused any price, but he offered them to 
me very gracefully as a gift, though of course it was not 
possible that I should accept them so.” 

“ The man is the most insolent larron in the service,” 
muttered her host, as he motioned Cecil back off the ter- 
race. “ Get you gone, sir, and leave your toys here, or I 
will have them broken up by a hammer.” 

. The words were low, that they should not offend the ears 
of the great ladies who were his listeners, but they were 
coarsely savage in their whispered command, and the Prin- 
cess heard them. 

“He has brought his Chasseur here only to humiliate 
him,” thought Miladi with the same thought that flashed 
through the mind of the little Friend of the Flag where 
she hid among her rhododendrons. Now the dainty aris- 
tocrat was very proud, but she was not so proud but that 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACIIETTE. 331 

justice was stronger in her than pride, and a noble gener- 
ous temper mellowed the somewhat too cold and languid 
negligence of one of the fairest and haughtiest women 
that ever adorned a court. She was too generous not to 
rescue any one who suffered through her the slightest in- 
justice, not to interfere when through her any misconcep- 
tion lighted on another; she told with her sex’s rapid per- 
ception and sympathy that the man, whom Chateauroy 
addressed with the brutal insolence of a bully to his diso- 
bedient dog, had once been a gentleman, though he now 
held but the rank of a sous-officier in the Algerian Cavalry, 
and she saw that he suffered all the more keenly under an 
outrage he had no power to resist because of that enforced 
serenity, that dignity of silence and of patience, with which 
he stood before his tyrant. 

“ Wait,” she said, moving a little toward them, while she 
let her eyes rest on the carver of the sculptures with a grave 
compassion, though she addressed his chief. “You wholly 
mistake me. I laid no blame whatever on your Corporal. 
Let him take the chessmen back with him ; I would on no 
account rob him of them. I can well understand that he 
does not care to part with such master-pieces of his art ; 
and that he would not appraise them by their worth in gold 
only shows that he is a true artist, as doubtless also he is a 
true soldier.” 

The words were spoken with a gracious courtesy, the 
clear cold tone of her habitual manner just marking in 
them still the difference of caste between her and the man 
for whom she interceded, as she would equally have inter- 
ceded for a dog who should have been threatened with the 
lash because he had displeased her. That very tone struck 
a sharper blow to Cecil than the insolence of his commander 
had power to deal him. His face flushed a little; he lifted 
his cap to her with a grave reverence, and moved away. 

“I thank you, madame. Keep them, if you will so far 
honor me.” 

The words reached only her ear, in another instant he 
had passed away down the terrace steps, obedient to his 
chief’s dismissal. 

“Ah ! have no kind scruples in keeping them, madame,” 
Chateauroy laughed to her, as she still held in her hand, 
doubtfully, the White Sheik of the chess Arabs; “I will 


332 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


see that Bel-a-faire-peur, as they call him, does not suffer 
by losing these trumperies, which, I believe, old Zist-et- 
Zest, a veteran of ours and a wonderful carver, had really 
far more to do with producing than he. You must not let 
your gracious pity be moved by such fellows as these troopers 
of mine ; they are the most ingenious rascals in the world, 
and know as well how to produce a dramatic effect in your 
presence as they do how to drink and to swear when they 
are out of it.” 

“Very possibly,” she said, with an indolent indifference; 
“but that man was no actor, and I never saw a gentleman 
if he have not been one.” 

“ Like enough,” answered the Marquis. “ I believe many 
* gentlemen 1 come in our ranks who have fled their native 
countries and broken all laws from the Decalogue to the 
Code Napoleon. So long as they fight well, we don’t ask 
their past criminalities. We cannot afford to throw away 
a good sabreur because he has made his own land too hot 
to hold him.” 

“ Of what country is^your Corporal, then ?” 

“I have not an idea. I imagine his past must have 
been something very black indeed, for the slightest trace 
of it has never, that I know of, been allowed to let slip from 
him. He encourages the men in every insubordination, 
buys their favor with every sort of stage trick, thinks him- 
self the finest gentleman in the whole brigades of Africa, 
and ought to have been shot long ago if he had had his 
real deserts.” 

She let her glance dwell on him with a contemplation 
that was half contemptuous amusement, half unexpressed 
dissent. 

“ I wpnder he has not been, since you have the ruling of 
his fate,” she said, with a slight smile lingering about the 
proud rich softness of her lips. 

“ So do I.” 

There was a gaunt, grim, stern significance in the three 
monosyllables that escaped him unconsciously; it made 
her turn and look at him more closely. 

“ How has he offended you ?” she asked. 

Chateauroy laughed off the question. 

“In a thousand ways, madame. Chiefly because I re- 


CIGARETTE EN CONSEIL ET CACHETTE. 383 

ceived my regimental training under one who followed the 
traditions of the Armies of Egypt and the Rhine, and 
have, I confess, little tolerance, in consequence, of a rebel 
who plays the martyr, and a soldier who is too effeminate 
an idler to do anything except attitudinize in interesting 
situations to awaken sympathy.’’ 

She listened with something of distaste upon her face 
where she still leaned against the marble balustrade toying 
with the ivory Bedouins. 

“I am not much interested in military discussions,” she 
said, coldly, “but I imagine — if you will pardon me for 
saying so — that you do your Corporal some little injustice 
here. I should not fancy he ‘affects’ anything, to judge 
from the very good tone of- his manners. For the rest, I. 
shall not keep the chessmen without making him fitting 
payment for them ; since he declines money, you will tell 
me what form that had better take to be of real and wel- 
come service to a Chasseur d’Afrique.” 

Chateauroy, more incensed than he chose or dared to 
show, bowed courteously, but with a grim ironic smile. 

“ If you really insist, give him a Napoleon or two when- 
ever you see him ; he will be very happy to take it and 
spend it au cabaret , though he played the aristocrat to-day. 
But you are too good to him ; he is one of the very worst 
of my pratiques , and you are as cruel to me in refusing to 
deign to accept my trooper’s worthless bagatelles at my 
hands.” 

She bent her superb head silently, whether in acquiescence 
or rejection he could not well resolve with himself, and 
turned to the staff-officers, among them the heir of a princely 
semi-royal French House, who surrounded her, and sorely 
begrudged the moments she had given to those miniature 
carvings and the private soldier who had wrought them. 
She was no coquette ; she was of too imperial a nature, 
had too lofty a pride, and was too difficult to charm or to 
enchain ; but those meditative, brilliant, serene eyes had a 
terrible gift of wakening without ever seeking love, and of 
drawing without ever recompensing homage. 

Couched down among her rose-hued covert, Cigarette 
had watched and heard, her teeth set tightly, her breath 
coming and going swiftly, her hand clinched close on the 


334 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


butts of her pistols, fiery curses, with all the infinite variety 
in cursing of a barrack repertoire , chasing one another in 
hot fast mutterings off those bright lips, that should have 
known nothing except a child’s careless and innocent 
song. 

“Comme elle est belle! comme elle est belle!” she 
whispered every now and then to herself, with a new, bitter, 
ferocious meaning in the whisper that had, with all its hate, 
something pathetic too. She had never looked at a beau- 
tiful high-bred woman before, holding them in gay satirical 
disdain as mere papillons rouants who could not prime a 
revolver and fire it off to save their own lives, if ever such 
need arose ; a depth of ignorance that was, to the vivan- 
diere’s view, the ne plus ultra of crassitude and impotence. 
But now she studied one through all the fine, quickened, 
unerring instincts of jealousy ; and there is no instinct in 
the world that gives such thorough appreciation of the 
very rival it reviles. She saw the courtly negligence, the 
regal grace, the fair brilliant loveliness, the delicious serene 
languor, of a pure “ aristocrate ” for the very first time to 
note them, and they made her heart sick with a new and 
deadly sense ; they moved her much as the white delicate 
carvings of the lotus-lilies and the lentiscus-leaves had done ; 
they, like the carvings, showed her all she had missed. 
She dropped her head suddenly like a wounded bird, and 
the racy vindictive camp-oaths died off her lips. She 
thought of herself as she had danced that mad bacchic 
bamboula amid the crowd of shouting, stamping, drunken, 
half-infuriated soldiery, and for the moment she hated her- 
self more even than she hated that patrician yonder. 

“ I know what he meant now!” she pondered, and her 
spirited, sparkling, brunette face was dark and weary, like 
a brown sun-lightened brook over whose radiance the 
heavy shadow of some broad-spread eagle’s wings hovers, 
hiding the sun. 

She looked once, twice, thrice, more inquiringly, envy- 
ingly, thirstily ; then, as the band under the cedars rolled 
out their music afresh, and light laughter echoed to her 
from the terrace, she turned and wound herself back under 
the cover of the shrubs, not joyously and mischievously as 
she had come, but almost as slowly, almost as sadly, as a 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 


335 


hare that the greyhounds have coursed drags itself through 
the grasses and ferns. 

Once through the cactus hedge her old spirit returned ; 
she shook herself angrily with petulant self-scorn ; she swore 
a little, and felt that the fierce familiar words did her good 
like brandy poured down her throat; she tossed her head 
like a colt that rebels against the gall of the curb; then, 
fleet as a fawn, she dashed down the moonlit road at top- 
most speed. “Diantre! she can’t do what I dol” she 
thought. 

And she ran the faster, and sang a drinking-song of the 
Spahis all the louder, because still at her heart a dull pain 
was aching. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 

Cigarette always went fast. She had a bird-like way 
of skimming her ground that took her over it with wonder- 
ful swiftness, all the tassels, and ribbon knots, and sashes 
with which her uniform was rendered so gay and so dis- 
tinctive fluttering behind her, and her little military boots, 
with the bright spurs twinkling, flying over the earth too 
lightly for a speck of dust, though it lay thick as August 
suns could parch it, to rest upon her. Thus she went now, 
along the lovely moonlight, singing her drinking song so 
fast and so loud that had it been any other than this young 
fire-eater of the African squadrons it might have been sup- 
posed she sang out of fear and bravado — two things, how- 
ever, that never touched Cigarette; for she exulted in 
danger as friskily as a young salmon exults in the first 
fresh, crisp, tumbling crest of a sea-wave, and would have 
backed up the most vainglorious word she could have 
spoken with the cost of her life, had need been. Suddenly, 
as she went, she heard a shout on the still night air — very 
still now, that the lights, and the melodies, and the laughter 


33G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


of Chateauroy’s villa lay far behind, and the town of Al- 
giers was yet distant, with its lamps glittering down by 
the sea. 

The shout was, “ A moi, Roumis! Pour la France /” 
And Cigarette knew the voice, ringing melodiously and 
calmly still, though it gave the sound of alarm. 

“Cigarette au secour!” she cried in answer; she had 
cried it many a time over the heat of battle-fields, and 
when the wounded men in the dead of the sickly night 
writhed under the knife of the camp-thieves. If she had 
gone like the wind before, she went like the lightning 
now. 

A few yards onward she saw a confused knot of horses 
and of riders struggling one with another in a cloud of 
white dust, silvery and hazy in the radiance of the moon. 

The center figure was Cecil’s ; the four others were Arabs, 
armed to the teeth and mad with drink, who had spent the 
whole day in drunken debauchery, pouring in raki down 
their throats until they were wild with its poisonous fire, 
and had darted headlong all abreast down out of the town 
overriding all that came in their way, and lashing their 
poor beasts with their sabers till the horses’ flanks ran 
blood. Just as they neared Cecil, they had knocked aside 
and trampled over a worn-out old colon, of age too feeble 
for him to totter in time from their path. Cecil had reined 
up and shouted to them to pause ; they, inflamed with the 
perilous drink, and senseless with the fury which seems 
to possess every Arab once started in a race neck to 
neck, were too blind to see, and too furious to care, that 
they were faced by a soldier of France, but rode down on 
him at once, with their curled sabers flashing round their 
heads. His horse stood the shock gallantly, and he sought 
at first only to parry their thrusts and to cut through their 
stallions’ reins ; but the latter were chain bridles, and only 
knotched his sword as the blade struck them, and the former 
became too numerous and too savagely dealt to be easily 
played with in carte and tierce. The Arabs were dead- 
drunk, he saw at a glance, and had got the blood-thirst 
upon them ; roused and burning with brandy and raki, 
these men were like tigers to deal with; the words he had 
spoken they never heard, and their horses hemmed him in 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 337 

powerless, while their steel flashed on every side; — they 
were not of the tribe of the Khalifa. 

If he struck not, and struck not surely, he saw that a 
few moments more of that moonlight night were all that 
he would live. He wished to avoid bloodshed, both be- 
cause his sympathies were always with the conquered tribes, 
and because he knew that every one of these quarrels and 
combats between the vanquisher and the vanquished served 
further to widen the breach, already broad enough, between 
them. But it was no longer a matter of choice with him, 
as his shoulder was grazed by a thrust which, but for a 
8\verve of his horse, would have pierced to his lungs ; and 
the four riders, yelling like madmen, forced the animal 
back on his haunches, and assaulted him with breathless 
violence. He swept his own arm back, and brought his 
saber down straight through the sword-arm of the fore- 
most; the limb was cleft through as if the stroke of 
an axe had severed it, and, thrice infuriated, the Arabs 
closed in on him. The points of their weapons were pierc- 
ing his harness when, sharp and swift, one on another, three 
shots hissed past him; the nearest of his assailants fell 
stone dead, and the others, wounded and startled, loosed 
their hold, shook their reins, and tore off down the lonely 
road, while the dead man’s horse, shaking his burden from 
him out of the stirrups, followed them at a headlong gal- 
lop through a cloud of dust. 

“ That was a pretty cut through the arm ; better had it 
been through the throat. Never do things by halves, ami 
Victor, ” said Cigarette carelessly, as she thrust her pistols 
back into her sash, and looked, with the tranquil apprecia- 
tion of a connoisseur, on the brown, brawny, naked limb, 
where it lay severed on the sand, with the hilt of the 
weapon still hanging in the sinewy fingers. Cecil threw 
himself from his saddle and gazed at her in bewildered 
amazement ; he had thought those sure, cool, death-dealing 
shots had come from some Spahis or Chasseur. 

“I owe you my life 1” he said rapidly. “But — good 
God ! — you have shot the fellow dead ” 

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders with a contemptuous 
glance at the Bedouin’s corpse. 

“ To be sure — I am not a bungler.” 

W 29 


338 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


‘J Happily for me, or I had been where he lies now. 
But wait — let me look ; there may be breath in him yet.” 

Cigarette laughed, offended and scornful, as with the 
offense and scorn of one whose first science was im- 
peached. 

“ Pas si betef Look and welcome ; but if you find any 
life in that Arbi, make a laugh of it before all the army 
tomorrow.” 

She was at her fiercest. A thousand new emotions had 
been roused iu her that night, bringing pain with them, 
that she bitterly resented ; and, moreover, this child of the 
Army of Africa caught fire at the flame of battle with 
instant contagion, and had seen slaughter around her from 
her first infancy. 

Cecil, disregarding her protest, stooped and raised the 
fallen Bedouin. He saw at a glance that she was right ; 
the lean, dark, lustful face was set in the rigidity of 
death ; the bullet had passed straight through the tem- 
ples. 

“ Did you never see a dead man before ?” demanded 
Cigarette impatiently, as he lingered ; — even in this mo- 
ment he had more thought of this Arbico than he had of 
her I 

He laid the Arab’s body gently down, and looked at her 
with a glance that, rightly or wrongly, she thought had a 
rebuke in it. 

“Very many. But — it is never a pleasant sight. And 
they were in drink ; they did not know what they did.” 

“ Pardieu ! What divine pity 1 Good powder and ball 
were sore wasted, it seems ; you would have preferred to 
lie there yourself, it appears. I beg your pardon for in- 
terfering with the preference.” 

Her eyes were flashing, her lips very scornful and wrath- 
ful. This was his gratitude ! 

“Wait, wait,” said Cecil rapidly, laying his hand on her 
shoulder, as she flung herself away. “ My dear child, do 
not think me ungrateful. I know well enough I should be 
a dead man myself had it not been for your gallant assist- 
ance. Believe me, I thank you from my heart.” 

“ But you think me ‘unsexed’ all the same I I see, beau 
lion /” 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 


339 


The word had rankled in her; she could launch it now 
with telling reprisal. 

He smiled ; but he saw that this phrase, which she 
had overheard, had not alone incensed, but had wounded 
her. 

“ Well, a little, perhaps,” he said gently. “ How should 
it be otherwise ? And, for that matter, I have seen many 
a great lady look on and laugh her soft, cruel laughter, 
while the pheasants were falling by hundreds, or the stags 
being torn by the hounds. They called it ‘sport,’ but 
there was not much difference — in the mercy of it, at 
least — from your war. And they had not a tithe of your 
courage. ” 

The answer failed to conciliate her ; there was an accent 
of compassion in it that ill suited her pride, and a lack of 
admiration that was not less new and unwelcome. 

“ It was well for you that I was unsexed enough to be 
able to send an ounce of lead into a drunkard 1” she pur- 
sued with immeasurable disdain. “ If I had been like that 
dainty aristocrat down there — pardieu ! it had been worse 
for you. I should have screamed, and fainted, and left 
you to be killed, while I made a tableau. Oh-he, that is 
to be ‘feminine,’ is it not?” 

“ Where did you see that lady ?” he asked in some sur- 
prise. 

“ Oh 1 I was there !” answered Cigarette, with a toss of 
her head southward to where the villa lay. “I went to 
see how you would keep your promise.” 

“Well, you saw I kept it.” 

She gave her little teeth a sharp click like the click of a 
trigger. 

“Yes. And I would have forgiven you if you had 
broken it.” 

“ Would you ? I should not have forgiven myself.” 

“ Ah ! you are just like Marquise. And you will end 
like him.” 

“ Very probably.” 

She knitted her pretty brows, standing there in his path 
with the pistols thrust in her sash, and her hands resting 
lightly on her hips, as a good workman rests after a neatly 
finished job, and her dainty fez set half on one side on her 


340 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


brown tangled curls, while upon them the intense luster of 
the moonlight streamed, and in the dust, well-nigh at 
their feet, lay the gaunt, white-robed form of the dead 
Arab, with the olive saturnine face turned upward to the 
stars. 

“ Why did you give those chessmen to that silver pheas- 
ant ?” she asked him abruptly. 

“ Silver pheasant ?” 

“Yes. See how she sweeps — sweeps — sweeps so lan- 
guid, so brilliant, so useless — bah ! Why did you give 
them ?” 

“ She admired them. It was not much to give.” 

“ Diantre I You would not have given them to a daugh- 
ter of the people.” 

“Why not?” 

“Why not? Oh-he ! Because her hands would be 
hard, and brown, and coarse, not fit for those ivory pup- 
pets ; but Miladi’s are white like the ivory, and cannot soil 
it. She will handle them so gracefully, for five minutes ; 
and then buy a new toy, and let her lap-dog break yours !” 

“Like enough.” He said it with his habitual gentle 
temper, but there was a shadow of pain in the words. The 
chessmen had become in some sort like living things to 
him, through long association ; he had parted from them 
not without regret, though for the moment courtesy and 
generosity of instinct had overcome it; and he knew that 
it was but too true how in all likelihood these trifles of his 
art, that had brought him many a solace and been his com- 
panion through many a lonely hour, would be forgotten by 
the morrow, where he had bestowed them, and at best put 
aside in a cabinet to lie unnoticed among bronzes or porce- 
lain, or be set on some boudoir-table to be idled with in 
the mimic warfare that would serve to cover some listless 
flirtation. 

Cigarette, quick to sting, but as quick to repent using 
her sting, saw the regret in him ; with the rapid, uncalcu- 
lating liberality of an utterly unselfish and intensely im- 
pulsive nature, she hastened to make amends by saying 
what was like gall on her tongue in the utterance: 

“ TiensI ” she said quickly. “Perhaps she will value 
them more than that. I know nothing of the aristocrats— 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 


341 


not I ! When you were gone, she championed you against 
the Black Hawk. She told him that if you had not been 
a gentleman before you came into the ranks, she had never 
seen one. Ma cantche! she spoke well, if you had but 
heard her.” 

“ She did !” 

She saw his glance brighten as it turned on her in a sur- 
prised gratification. 

“ Well 1 What is there so wonderful ?” 

Cigarette asked it with a certain petulance and dogged- 
ness, taking a namesake out of her breast-pocket, biting 
its end off, and striking a fusee. A word from this aristo- 
crat was more welcome to him than a bullet that had saved 
his life I 

Her generosity had gone very far, and, like most gen- 
erosity, got nothing for its pains. 

He was silent a few moments, tracing lines in the dust 
with the point of his scabbard. Cigarette, with the cigar 
in her mouth, stamped her foot impatiently. 

“ Corporal Victor ! are you going to dream there all 
night ? What is to be done with this dog of an Ar- 
bico ?” 

She was angered by him; she was in the mood to make 
herself seem all the rougher, fiercer, naughtier, and more 
callous. She had shot the man — poufl what of that? 
She had shot men before, as all Africa knew. She would 
defend a half-fledged bird, a terrified sheep, a worn-out old 
cur ; but a man ! Men were the normal and natural food 
for pistols and rifles, she considered. A state of society 
in which fire-arms had been unknown was a thing Cigar- 
ette had never heard of, and in which she would have 
contumeliously disbelieved if she had been told of it. 

Cecil looked up from his musing ; he thought what a 
pity it was this pretty, graceful French kitten was such a 
blood-thirsty young panther at heart. 

“I scarcely know what to do,” he answered her doubt- 
fully. “ Put him across my saddle, poor wretch, I sup- 
pose ; the fray must be reported.” 

“ Leave that to me,” said Cigarette decidedly, and with 
a certain haughty patronage. “ 1 shot him — I will see 
the thing gets told right. It might be awkward for you ; 

29 * 


342 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


they are growing so squeamish about the Roumis killing 
the natives. Draw him to one side there, and leave him. 
The crows will finish his affair. ” 

The coolness with which this handsome child disposed 
of the fate of what, a moment or two before, had been a 
sentient, breathing, vigorous frame, sent a chill through 
her hearer, though he had been seasoned by a decade of 
slaughter. 

“No,” he said briefly. “ Suspicion might fall on some 
innocent passer-by. Besides — he shall have decent burial.” 

“Burial for an Arbi — faugh 1” cried Cigarette in deri- 
sion. “ Parbleu, M. Bel-a-faire-peur, I have seen hundreds 
of our best lascars lie rotting on the plains with the birds’ 
beaks at their eyes and the jackals’ fangs in their flesh. 
What was good enough for them is surely good enough for 
him. You are an eccentric fellow — you ” 

He laughed a little. 

“ Time was when I should have begged you not to call * 
me any such ‘ bad form !’ Eccentric ! I am not genius 
enough for that.” 

“Eh ?” — she did not understand him. “Well, you want 
that carrion poked into the earth, instead of lying atop of 
it. I don’t see much difference myself. I would like to 
be in the sun as long as I could, I think, dead or alive. 
Ah ! how odd it is to think one will be dead some day — 
never wake for the reveille — never hear the cannon or 
the caissons roll by — never stir when the trumpets sound 
the charge, but lie there dead — dead — dead — while the 
squadrons thunder above one’s grave 1 Droll, eh ?” 

A momentary pathos softened her voice (which could 
melt and change into a wonderful music), where she stood 
in the glistening moonlight. That the time would ever 
come when her glad laughter would be hushed, when her 
young heart would beat no more, when the bright, abund- 
ant, passionate blood would bound no longer through her 
veins, when all the vivacious, vivid, sensuous charms of 
living would be ended for her forever, was a thing that she 
could no better bring home to her than a bird that sings 
in the light of the sun could be made to know that the 
time would come when its little melodious throat would be 
frozen in death, and give song never more 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 


343 


The tone touched him — made him think less and less of 
her as a dare-devil boy, as a reckless child-soldier, and 
more of her as what she was, than he had done before ; he 
touched her almost caressingly. 

“Pauvre enfant ! I hope that day will be very dis- 
tant from you. And yet — how bravely you risked death 
for me just now !” 

Cigarette, though accustomed to the lawless loves of 
the camp, flushed ever so slightly at the mere caress of his 
hand. 

11 Chut! I risked nothing !” she said rapidly. “ As for 
death, — when it comes, it comes. Every soldier carries it 
in his wallet, and it may jump out on him any minute. I 
would rather die young than grow old. Pardi ! age is 
nothing else but death that is conscious .” 

“Where do you get your wisdom, little one ?” 

“Wisdom ? Bah ! living is learning. Some people go 
through life with their eyes shut, and then grumble there 
is nothing to see in it ! Well — you want that Arbi buried ? 
What a fancy ! Look you, then ; stay by him, since you 
are so fond of him, and I will go and send some men to 
you with a stretcher to carry him down to the town. As 
for reporting, leave that to me ; I shall tell them 1 left you 
on guard. That will square things if you are late at the 
barrack. ” 

“But that will give you so much trouble, Cigarette.” 

“ Trouble*? Morbleu ! Do you think I am like that 
silver pheasant yonder ? Lend me your horse, and I shall 
be in the town in ten minutes !” 

She vaulted, as she spoke, into the saddle ; he laid his 
hand on the bridle, and stopped her. 

“ Wait ! I have not thanked you half enough, my brave 
little champion. How am I to show you my gratitude ?” 

For a moment the bright, brown, changeful face, that 
could look so fiercely scornful, so sunnily radiant, so tem- 
pestuously passionate, and so tenderly childlike, in almost 
the same moment, grew warm as the warm suns that had 
given their fire to her veins ; she glanced at him almost 
slyly, while the moonlight slept lustrously in the dark soft- 
ness of her eyes ; there was an intense allurement in her in 
that moment — the allurement of a womans loveliness, bit- 


344 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


terly as she disdained a woman’s charms. It might have 
told him, more plainly than words, how best he could re* 
ward her for the shot that had saved him ; yet, though a 
man on whom such beguilement usually worked only too 
easily and too often, it did not now touch him. He was 
grateful to her, but, despite himself, he was cold to her ; 
despite himself, the life which that little hand that he held 
had taken so lightly made it the hand of a comrade to be 
grasped in allia^pe, but never the hand of a mistress to 
steal to his lips and to lie in his breast. 

Her rapid and unerring instinct made her feel that 
keenly and instantly ; she had seen too much passion not 
to know when it was absent. The warmth passed off her 
face, her teeth clinched, she shook the bridle out of his 
hold. 

“ Take gratitude to Miladi there ! She will value fine 
words ; I set no count on them. I did no more for you 
than I have done scores of times for my Spahis. Ask them 
how many I have shot with my own hand 1” 

In another instant she was away like a sirocco, a whirl- 
wind of dust that rose in the moonlight marking her flight 
as she rode full gallop down to Algiers. 

“ A kitten with the tigress in her,” thought Cecil as he 
seated himself on a broken pile of stone to keep his vigil 
over the dead Arab. It was not that he was callous to 
the generous nature of the little Friend of the Flag, or 
that he was insensible either of the courage that beat so 
dauntlessly in her pulses, or of the piquant, picturesque 
grace that accompanied even her wildest actions ; but she 
had nothing of her sex’s charm for him. He thought of 
her rather as a young soldier than as a young girl. She 
* amused him as a wayward, bright, mischievous, audacious 
boy might have done ; but she had no other interest for 
him. He had given her little attention ; a waltz, a cigar, 
a passing jest, were all he had bestowed on the little 
lionneoi the Spahis corps; and the deepest sentiment she 
had ever awakened in him was an involuntary pity — pity 
for this flower which blossomed on the polluted field of 
war, and under the poison-dropping branches of lawless 
crime. A flower bright-hued, sun-fed, glancing with the 
dews of youth now, when it had just unclosed, in all its 


CIGARETTE EN C ONDOTTIERA. 


345 


earliest beauty, but already soiled and tainted by the bed 
from which it sprang, and doomed to be swept away with 
time, scentless and loveless, down the rapid, noxious cur- 
rent of that broad, black stream of vice on which it now 
floated so heedlessly. 

Even now his thoughts drifted from her almost before 
the sound of the horse’s hoofs had died where he sat on a 
loose pile of stones, with the lifeless limbs of the Arab at 
his feet. 

“ Who was it in my old life that she is like ?” he was 
musing. It was the deep-blue, dreaming, haughty eyes of 
“Miladi” that he was bringing back to memory, not the 
brown mignon face that had been so late close to his in the 
light of the moon. 

Meanwhile, on his good gray, Cigarette rode like a true 
Chasseur herself. She was used to the saddle, and would 
ride a wild desert colt without stirrup or bridle, balancing 
her supple form now on one foot, now on the other, on the 
animal’s naked back, while they flew at full speed, with a 
skill and address that would have distanced the best hero- 
ines of manbge and hippodrome. Not so fantastically, but 
full as speedily, she dashed down into the city, scattering 
all she met with right and left, till she rode straight up to 
the barracks of the Chasseurs d’Afrique. At the entrance, 
as she reined up, she saw the very person she wanted, and 
signed him to her as carelessly as if he were a conscript 
instead of that powerful officer, Francis Yireflau, captain 
and adjutant. 

“ Hola 1” she cried, as she signaled him ; Cigarette was 
privileged all through the army, and would have given the 
langue verte to the Emperor himself, had she met him. 
“Adjutant Yireflau, I come to tell you a good story for 
your f 'olios. matricides. There is your Corporal there — 
le beau Victor — has been attacked by four drunken dogs 
of Arbicos, dead drunk, and four against one. He fought 
them superbly, but he would only parry, not thrust, be- 
cause he knows how strict the rules are about dealing with 
the scoundrels — even when they are murdering you, par- 
bleu ! He has behaved splendidly. 1 tell you so. And he 
was so patient with these dogs that he would not have 
killed one of them. But I did j shot one straight through 


346 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the brain — a beautiful thing — and he lies on the Oran road 
now. Victor would not leave him, for fear some passer- 
by should be thought guilty of a murder; so I came on 
to tell you, and ask you to send some men up for the jack- 
al’s body. Ah ! he is a fine soldier, that Bel-a-faire-peur 
of yours. Why don’t you give him a step — two steps — 
three steps ? Diantre ! It is not like France to leave him 
a Corporal 1” 

Vireflau listened attentively — a short, lean, black- vis- 
aged campaigner, who yet relaxed into a grim half-smile 
as the vivandiere addressed him with that air as of a gen- 
eralissimo addressing a subordinate, which always charac- 
terized Cigarette the more strongly the higher the grade of 
her companion or opponent. 

“ Always eloquent, pretty one 1” he growled. 11 Are you 
sure he did not begin the fray ?” 

“Macaiitche! Don’t I tell you the four Arabs were 
like four devils 1 They knocked down an old colon, and 
Bel-a-faire-peur tried to prevent their doing more mischief, 
and they set on him like so many wild-cats. He kept his 
temper wonderfully; he always tries to preserve order; 
you can’t say so much of your riff-raff, Captain Vireflau, 
commonly 1 Here ! this is his horse. Send some men to 
him ; and mind the thing is reported fairly, and to his 
credit, to-morrow.” 

With which command, given as with the air of a com- 
mander-in-chief, in its hauteur and its nonchalance, Cigar- 
ette vaulted off the charger, flung the bridle to a soldier, 
and was away and out of sight before Francis Vireflau 
had time to consider whether he should laugh at her ca- 
prices, as all the army did, or resent her insolence to his 
dignity. But he was a good-natured man, and, what was 
better, a just one ; and Cigarette had judged rightly that 
the tale she had told would weigh well with him to the 
credit side of his Corporal, and would not reach his Colo- 
nel in any warped version that could give pretext for any 
fresh exercise of tyranny over “ Bel-a-faire-peur ” under 
the title of “discipline.” 

“ Dieu de Dieu !” thought his champion as she made her 
way through the gay-lit streets. “ I swore to have my 
vengeance on him. It is a droll vengeance, to save ilia 


CIGARETTE EN CONDOTTIERA. 


341 


life, and plead his cause with Yirefiau ! No matter 1 one 
could not look on and let a set of Arbicos kill a good las - 
car of France, and the thing that is just must be said, let 
it go as it will against one’s grain. Public Welfare before 
Private Pique !” 

A grand and misty generality which consoled Cigarette 
* for an abandonment of her sworn revenge which she felt 
was a weakness utterly unworthy of her, and too much 
like that inconsequent weathercock, that useless, insignfi 
cant part of creation, those objects of her supreme deri- 
sion and contempt, those frivolous trifles which she won- 
dered the good God had ever troubled himself to make — 
namely, “Les Femmes .” 

“ Holit, Cigarette !” cried the Zouave Tata, leaning out 
of a little casement of the As de Pique as she passed it. 
“A la bonne heure , ma belle! Come in; we have the 
devil’s own fun here ” 

“No doubt !” retorted the Friend of the Flag. “It 
would be odd if the master-fiddler would not fiddle for his 
own 1” 

Through the window, and over the sturdy shoulders in 
their canvas shirt of the hero Tata, the room was visible, 
full of smoke, through which the lights glimmered like the 
sun in a fog, reeking with bad wines, crowded with laugh- 
ing bearded faces, and the battered beauty of women rev- 
elers, while on the table, singing with a voice Mario himself 
could not have rivaled for exquisite sweetness, was a slen- 
der Zouave gesticulating with the most marvelous panto- 
mime, while his melodious tones rolled out the obscenest 
and wittiest ballad that ever was caroled in a guinguette. 

“ Come in, my pretty one !” entreated Tata, stretching 
out his brawny arms. “You will die of laughing if you 
hear Gris-Gris to-night — such a song !” 

“ A pretty song, yes, for a pig-sty !” said Cigarette, with 
a glance into the chamber, and she shook his hand off her, 
and went on down the street. A night or two before a 
new song from Gris-Gris, the best tenor in the whole army, 
ivould have been paradise to her, as she would have 
vaulted through the window at a single bound into the 
pandemonium. Now, she did not know why, she found no 
charm it. 


348 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


And she went quietly home to her little straw-bed in 
her garret, and curled herself up like a kitten to sleep ; 
but for the first time in her young life sleep did not come 
readily to her, and when it did come, for the first time 
found a restless sigh upon her laughing mouth, as she 
murmured, dreaming : “Comme elle est belle! Gomme 
elle est belle ! n 


CHAPTER XXII. 

THE MISTRESS OF THE WHITE KING 

“ Fighting in the Kabaila, life was well enough ; but 
here 1” thought Cecil as, earlier awake than those of his 
Chambree, he stood looking down the lengthy narrow room 
where the men lay asleep along the bare fioor. 

Tired as overworked cattle, and crouched or stretched 
like worn-out homeless dogs, they had never wakened as 
he had noiselessly harnessed himself, and he looked at them 
with that interest in other lives that had come to him 
through adversity ; for if misfortune had given him strength, 
it had also given him sympathy. 

They were of marvelously various types — those sleepers 
brought under one roof by fates the most diverse. Close 
beside a huge and sinewy brute of an Auvergnat, whose 
coarse bestial features and massive bull’s head were fitter 
for a galley-slave than a soldier, were the lithe ex- 
quisite limbs and the oval delicate face of a man from the 
Valley of the Rhone. Beneath a canopy of flapping tawny 
wild-beast skins, the spoils of his own hands, was flung the 
naked torso of one of the splendid peasants of the Sables 
d’Olonne; one steeped so long in blood and wine tmd al- 
cohol, that he had forgotten the blue bright waves that 
broke on the western shores of his boyhood’s home, save 
when he muttered thirstily in his dreams of the cool sea, 
as he was muttering now. Next him, curled, doglike, 
with its round black head meeting its feet, was a wiry 


TIIE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KING. 


349 


frame on which every muscle was traced like network, and 
the skin burnt black as jet under twenty years of African 
sun. The midnight streets of Paris had seen its birth, the 
thieves’ quarter had been its nest; it had no history, it had 
almost no humanity ; it was a perfect machine for slaughter, 
no more — who had ever tried to make it more ? 

Further on lay, sleeping fitfully, a boy of scarcely more 
than seventeen, with rounded cheeks and fair white brow 
like a child’s, whose uncovered chest was delicate as a girl’s, 
and through whose long brown lashes tears in his slumber 
were stealing as his rosy mouth murmured, “Mere! mere ! 
Pauvre mhre!” He was a young conscript taken from 
the glad vine-country of the Loire, and from the. little 
dwelling up in the rock beside the sunny brimming river, 
and half-buried under its grape-leaves and coils, that was 
dearer to him than is the palace to its heir. There were 
many others beside these ; and Cecil looked at them with 
those weary speculative meditative fancies which, very alien 
to his temperament, stole on him occasionally in the priva- 
tions and loneliness of his existence here — loneliness in the 
midst of numbers, the most painful of all solitude. 

Life was bearable enough to him in the activity of 
campaigning, in the excitement of warfare; there were 
times even when it yielded him absolute enjoyment, and 
brought him interests more genuine and vivid than any he 
had known in his former world. But, in the monotony 
and the confinement of the barrack routine, his days were 
often intolerable to him. Morning after morning he rose 
to the same weary round of duty, the same series of petty 
irritations, of physical privations, of irksome repetitions, 
to take a toss of black rough coffee, and begin the day 
knowing it would bring with it endless annoyances without 
one gleam of hope. Rose to spend hours on the exercise- 
ground in the glare of a burning sun, railed at if a trooper’s 
accouterment were awry, or an insubordinate scoundrel had 
pawned his regulation shirt; to be incessantly witness of 
tyrannies and cruelties he was powerless to prevent, and 
which he continually saw undo all he had done, and render 
men desperate whom he had spent months in endeavoring 
to make contented ; to have as the only diversions for his 
few instants of leisure loathsome pleasures that disgusted 

30 


350 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the senses they were meant to indulge, and that brought 
him to scenes of low debauchery from which all the old 
fastidious instincts of his delicate luxurious taste recoiled. 
With such a life as this, he often wondered regretfully why, 
out of the many Arab swords that had crossed his own, none 
had gone straight to his heart; why, out of the many 
wounds that had kept him hovering on the confines of the 
grave, none had ever brought him the end and the oblivion 
of death. 

Had he been subject to all the miseries and personal 
hardships of his present career, but had only owned the 
power to command, to pardon, to lead, and to direct 
as Alan Bertie before him had done with his Irregular 
Cavalry in the Indian plains, such a thought would never 
have crossed him ; he was far too thorough a soldier not 
then to have been not only satisfied, but happy. What 
made his life in the barracks of Algiers so bitter were the 
impotency, the subjection, the compelled obedience to a 
bidding that he knew often capricious and unjust as it was 
cruel, which were so unendurable to his natural pride, yet 
to which he had hitherto rendered undeviating adhesion 
and submission, less for his own sake than for that of the men 
around him, who, he knew, would back him in revolt to the 
death, and be dealt with, for such loyalty to him, in the 
fashion that the vivandiere’s words had pictured with such 
terrible force and truth. 

“Is it worth while to go on with it? Would it not be 
the wiser way to draw my own saber across my throat ?” 
he thought, as the brutalized companionship in which his 
life was spent struck on him all the more darkly because, 
the night before, a woman’s voice and a woman’s face had 
recalled memories buried for twelve long years. 

But, after so long a stand-up fight with fate, so long a 
victory over the temptation to let himself drift out in an 
opium-sleep from the world that had grown so dark to him, 
it was not in him to give under now. In his own way he 
had found a duty to do here, though he would have laughed 
at any one who should have used the word “duty” in con- 
nection with him. In his own way, amid these wild spirits, 
who would have been blown from the guns’ mouths to 
serve him, he had made good the “Cceur vaillant se fait 


THE MISTRESS OF THE WHITE KINO. 35 . 

Eoyaume ” of bis House. And be was, moreover, oy this 
time, a French soldier at heart and in habit, in almost all 
things, though the English gentleman was not dead in him 
under the harness of a Chasseur d’Afrique. 

This morning he roused the men of his Chambree with 
that kindly gentleness which had gone so far in its novelty 
to attach their liking; went through the customary routine 
of his post with that exactitude and punctuality of which 
he was always careful to set the example ; made his break- 
fast off some wretched onion-soup and a roll of black bread ; 
rode fifty miles in the blazing heat of the African day at 
the head of a score of his chasses-marais on convoy duty, 
bringing in escort a long string of maize-wagons from the 
region of the Kabaila, which, without such guard, might 
have been swooped down on and borne off by some preda- 
tory tribe ; and returned, jaded, weary, parched with thirst, 
scorched through with heat, and covered with white dust, 
to be kept waiting in his saddle, by his Colonel’s orders, 
outside the barrack for three-quarters of an hour, whether' 
to receive a command or a censure he was left in ignorance. 

When the three-quarters had passed, he was told M. le 
Commandant had gone long ago, and did not require him ! 

Cecil said nothing. 

Yet he reeled slightly as he threw himself out of saddle ; 
a nausea and a giddiness had come on him. To have 
passed nigh an hour motionless in his stirrups, with the 
skies like brass above him, while he was already worn with 
riding from sunrise well-nigh to sunset, with little to ap- 
pease hunger and less to slake thirst, made him, despite 
himself, stagger dizzily under a certain sense of blindness 
and exhaustion as he dismounted. 

The Chasseur who had brought him the message caught 
his arm eagerly. 

“ Are you hurt, mon GaporalV ’ 

Cecil shook his head. The speaker was one known in 
the regiment as Petit Picpon, who had begun life as a 
gamin of Paris, and now bade fair to make one of the most 
brilliant of the soldiers of Africa. Petit Picpon had but 
one drawback to his military career — he was always in 
insubordination ; the old gamin dare-devilry was not dead 
in him, and never would die; and Petit Picpon accordingly 


352 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


was perpetually a hero in the field and a ragamuffin in 
the times of peace. Of course he was always arrayed 
against authority, and now, being fond of his galonne with 
that curious doglike deathless attachment that these na- 
tures, all reckless, wanton, destructive, and mischievous 
though they be, so commonly bestow, he muttered a terrible 
curse under his fiercely curled moustaches. 

“If the Black Hawk were nailed up in the sun like a 
kite on a barn-door, I would drive twenty nails through 
his throat !” 

Cecil turned rapidly on him. 

“ Silence, sir 1 or I must report you. Another speech 
like that, and you shall have a turn at Beylick.” 

It went to his heart to rebuke the poor fellow for an 
outburst of indignation which had its root in regard for 
himself, but he knew that to encourage it by so much even 
as by an expression of gratitude for the affection borne 
him, would be to sow further and deeper the poison-seeds 
'of that inclination to mutiny and that rebellious hatred 
against their chief already only planted too strongly in the 
squadrons under Chateauroy’s command. 

Petit Picpon looked as crestfallen as one of his fraternity 
could; he knew well enough that what he had said could 
get him twenty blows of the matraque, if his corporal 
chose to give him up to judgment; but he had too much 
of the Parisian in him still not to have his say, though he 
should be shot for it. 

“Send me to Beylick if you like, Corporal,” he said, 
sturdily; “I was in wrath for you — not for myself. Di- 
antre 1” 

Cecil was infinitely more touched than he dared, for sake 
of discipline, for sake of the speaker himself, to show ; but 
his glance dwelt on Petit Picpon with a look that the quick, 
black, monkey-like eyes of the rebel were swift to read. 

“I know,” he said, gravely. “I do not misjudge you; 
but, at the same time, my name must never serve as a pre- 
text for insubordination. Such men as care to pleasure 
me will best do so in making my duty light by their own 
self-control and obedience to the rules of their service.” 

He led his horse away, and Petit Picpon went on an 
errand he had been sent to do in the streets for one of the 


THE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KINO. 


353 


officers. Picpon was unusually thoughtful and sober in 
deportment for him, since he was usually given to making 
his progress along a road, taken unobserved by those in 
command over him, “ faisant roue ,” with hands and heels 
in the dextrous somersaults of his early days. 

Now he went along without any unprofessional antics, 
biting the tip of a smoked-out cigar, which he had picked 
up off the pavement in sheer instinct, retained from the old 
times when he had used to rush in, the foremost of la queue , 
into the forsaken theaters of Bouffes or of Varietes in 
search for those odds and ends which the departed audience 
might have left behind them ; — one of the favorite modes 
of seeking a livelihood with the Parisian night-birds. 

“Dame 1 I will give it up then,’ 7 resolved Picpon, half 
aloud, valorously. 

Now Picpon had come forth on evil thoughts intent. 

His officer — a careless and extravagant man, the richest 
man in the regiment — had given him a rather small velvet 
bag, sealed, with directions to take it to a certain notorious 
beauty of Algiers, whose handsome Moresco eyes smiled — 
-or at least he’ believed so — exclusively for the time on the 
sender. Picpon was very quick, intelligent, and much liked 
by his superiors, so that he was often employed on errands; 
and the tricks he played in the execution thereof were so 
adroitly done that they were never detected. Picpon had 
chuckled to himself over this mission. It was but the 
work of an instant for the lithe nimble fingers of the ex- 
gamin to undo the bag without touching the seal, to see 
that it contained a hundred Napoleons with a note, to slip 
the gold into the folds of his ceinturon, to fill up the sack 
with date-stones, to make it assume its original form so 
that none could have imagined it had been touched, and to 
proceed with it thus to the Moorish lionne's dwelling. 
The negro who always opened her door would take it in ; 
Picpon would hint to him to be careful, as it contained 
some rare and rich sweetmeats ; negro nature, he well knew, 
would impel him to search for the bonbons ; and the bag, 
under his clumsy treatment, would bear plain marks of 
having been tampered with, and, as the African had a most 
thievish reputation, he would never be believed if he swore 
himself guiltless. Voil&f here was a neat trick 1 If it 
X 30* 


354 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


had a drawbacu, it was that it was too simple, too litile 
risque. A child might do it. 

Still — a hundred Naps.! What* fat geese, what flagons 
of brandy, what dozens of wine, what rich soups, what 
handsome moukieras, what tavern banquets they would 
bring ! Picpon had chuckled again as he arranged the little 
bag so carefully, with its date-stones, and pictured the rage 
of the beautiful Moor when she should discover the con- 
tents, and order the stick to her negro. Ah I that was 
what Picpon called fun ! 

To appreciate the full force of such fun, it is necessary 
to have also appreciated the gamin. To understand the 
legitimate aspect such a theft bore, it is necessary to have 
nlso understood the unrecordable codes that govern the 
genus pratique, into which the genus gamin, when at ma- 
turity, develops. 

Picpon was quite in love with his joke; it was only a 
good joke in his sight; and, indeed, men need to live as 
hardly as an African soldier lives, to estimate the full tempt- 
ation that gold can have when you have come to look on 
a cat as very good eating, and to have nothing to gnaw but 
a bit of old shoe-leather through the whole of the long 
hours of a burning day of fatigue-duty ; and to estimate, 
as well, the full width and depth of the renunciation that 
made him mutter now so valorously, “ Dame! I will give 
it up, then !” 

Picpon did not know himself as he said it. Yet he 
turned down into a lonely narrow lane, under marble walls, 
overtopped with fig and palm from some fine gardens, undid 
the bag for the second time, whisked out the date-stones 
and threw them over the wall, so that they should be oat 
of his reach if he repented, put back the Napoleons, closed 
the little sack, ran as hard as he could scamper to his des- 
tination, delivered his charge into the fair lady’s own hands, 
and relieved his feelings by a score of somersaults along the 
pavement as fast as ever he could go. 

“ Ma cantcheV' 1 he thought, as he stood on his head, 
with his legs at an acute angle in the air, a position very 
favored by him for moments of reflection — he said his brain 
worked better upside down. “ Ma. cantche! what a weak- 
ness, what a weakness ! What remorse to have yielded to 


THE MISTRESS OF THE WHITE KING. 355 

it ! Beneath you, Picpon — utterly beneath yon. Just be- 
cause that ci-devant says such follies please him in us !” 

Picpon (then in his gamin stage) had been enrolled in 
the Chasseurs at the same time with the “ci-devant” as 
they called Bertie, and, following his gamin nature, had 
exhausted all his resources of impudence, maliciousness, 
and power of tormenting, on the “aristocrat;” somewhat 
disappointed, however, that the utmost ingenuities of his 
insolence and even his malignity never succeeded in break- 
ing the “ aristocrat’s” silence and contemptuous forbearance 
from all reprisal. For the first two years the hell-on-earth, 
which life with a Franco-Arab regiment seemed to Cecil, 
was a hundredfold embittered by the brutalized jests and 
mosquito-like torments of this little odious chimpanzee of 
Paris. 

One day, however, it chanced that a detachment of Chas- 
seurs, of which Cecil was one, was cut to pieces by such an 
overwhelming mass of Arabs, that scarce a dozen of them 
could force their way through the Bedouins with life ; he 
was among those few, and a flight at' full speed was the sole 
chance of regaining their encampment. Just as he had 
shaken his bridle free of the Arabs’ clutch, and had mowed 
himself a clear path through their ranks, he caught sight 
of his young enemy, Picpon, on the ground, with a lance 
broken off in his ribs, guarding his head, with bleeding 
hands, as the horses trampled over him. To make a dash 
at the boy, though to linger a moment was to risk certain 
death, to send his steel through an Arab who came in his 
way, to lean down and catch hold of the lad’s sash, to swing 
him up into his saddle and throw him across it in front of 
him, and to charge afresh through the storm of musket- 
balls, and ride on thus burdened, was the work of ten sec- 
onds with “ Bel-a-faire-peur.” And he brought the boy 
safe over a stretch of six leagues in a flight for life, though 
the imp no more deserved the compassion than a scorpion 
that has spent all its noxious day stinging at every point of 
uncovered flesh would merit tenderness from the hand it had 
poisoned. 

When he was swung down from the saddle and laid in 
front of a vidette fire, sheltered from the bitter north wind 
that was then blowing cruelly, the bright, black, ape-like 


356 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


eyes of the Parisian diablotin opened with a strange gleam 
in them. 

“ Picpon s'en souviendra i, n he murmured. 

And Picpon had kept his word; he had remembered 
often, he remembered now, standing on his head and think- 
ing of his huudred Napoleons surrendered because thieving 
and lyin^in the regiment gave pain to that oddly preju- 
diced “cLdevant.” This was the sort of loyalty that the 
Franco-Arabs rendered; this was the sort of influence that 
the English Guardsman exercised among his Roumis. 

Meantime, while Picpon made a human cone of himself, 
to the admiration of the polyglot crowd of the Algerine 
street, Cecil himself, having watered, fed, and littered down 
his tired horse, made his way to a little cafe he commonly 
frequented, and spent the few sous he could afford on an 
iced draught of lemon-flavored drink. Eat he could not ; 
overfatigue had given him a nausea for food, and the last 
hour, motionless in the intense glow of the afternoon sun, 
had brought that racking pain through his temples which 
assailed him rarely now, but which in his first years in 
Africa had given him many hours of agony. He could not 
stay in the cafe ; it was the hour of dinner for many, and 
the odors joined with the noise were insupportable to 
him. 

A few doors farther in the street, which was chiefly of 
Jewish and Moslem shops, there was a quaint place kept 
by an old Moor, who had some of the rarest and most 
beautiful treasures of Algerian workmanship in his long, 
dark, silent chambers. With this old man Cecil had some- 
thing of a friendship ; he had protected him one day from 
the mockery and outrage of some drunken Indigenes, and 
the Moor, warmly grateful, was ever ready to give him a 
cup of coffee and a hubble-bubble in the stillness of his 
dwelling. Its resort was sometimes welcome to him as the 
one spot, quiet and noiseless, to which he could escape out 
of the continuous turmoil of street and of barrack, and 
he went thither now. He found the old man sitting cross- 
legged behind his counter ; a noble-looking, aged Mussul- 
man, with a long beard like white silk, with cashmeres and 
broidered stuffs of peerless texture hanging above his head, 
and all around him things of silver, of gold, of ivory, of 


THE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KINO. 357 

amber, of feathers, of bronze, of emeralds, of ruby, of 
beryl, whose rich colors glowed through the darkness. 

“No coffee, no sherbet, thanks, good father,” said 
Cecil, in answer to the Moor’s hospitable entreaties. 
u Give me only license to sit in the quiet here. I am 
very tired.” 

“ Sit and be welcome, my son,” said Ben Arsli. “ Whom 
should this roof shelter in honor, if not thee ? Musjid 
shall bring thee the supreme solace.” 

The supreme solace was a narghile, and its great bowl 
of rose-water was soon set down by the little Moorish lad 
at Cecil’s side. Whether fatigue really weighted his eyes 
with slumber, or whether the soothing sedative of the pipe 
had its influence, he had not sat long in the perfect still- 
ness of the Moor’s shop before the narrow view of the 
street under the awnirfg without was lost to him, the luster 
and confusion of shadowy hues swam awhile before his 
eyes, the throbbing pain in his temples grew duller, and 
he slept — the heavy, dreamless sleep of intense exhaustion. 

Ben Arsli glanced at him, and bade Musjid be very quiet. 
Half an hour or more passed ; none had entered the place. 
The grave old Moslem was half slumbering himself, when 
there came a delicate odor of perfumed laces, a del- 
icate rustle of silk swept the floor ; a lady’s voice asked 
the price of an ostrich-egg, superbly mounted in gold. 
Ben Arsli opened his eyes — the Chasseur slept on ; the 
new-comer was one of those great ladies who now and 
then winter in Algeria. 

Her carriage waited without ; she was alone, making 
purchase of those innumerable splendid trifles with which 
Algiers is rife, while she drove through. the town in the 
cooler hour before the sun sank into the western sea. 

The Moor rose instantly, with profound salaams, before 
her, and began to spread before her the richest treasures 
of his stock. Under plea of the light, he remained near 
the entrance with her ; money was dear to him, and must 
not be lost, but he would make it if he could without 
awakening the tired soldier. Marvelous caskets of mother- 
of-pearl; carpets soft as down, with every brilliant huo 
melting one within another; coffee equipages, of inimita- 
ble metalwork; silver statuettes, exquisitely chased and 


353 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


wrought ; feather-fans, and screens of every beauty of de- 
vice, were spread before her, and many of them were 
bought by her with that unerring grace of taste and lav- 
ishness of expenditure which were her characteristics, but 
which are far from always found in unison ; and through- 
out her survey Ben Arsli had kept her near the entrance, 
and Cecil had slept on unaroused by the low tones of their 
voices. 

A roll of notes had passed from her hand to the Mos- 
lem’s, and she was about to glide out to her carriage, when 
a lamp which hung at the farther end caught her fancy. It 
was very singular, a mingling of colored glass, silver, gold 
and ivory being wrought in with much beauty in its for- 
mation. 

“ Is that for sale ?” she inquired. # 

As he answered in the affirmative, she moved up the 
shop, and, her eyes being lifted to the lamp, had drawn 
close to Cecil before she saw him. When she did so, she 
paused near in astonishment. 

“ Is that soldier asleep ?” 

“He is, madame,” softly answered the old man in his 
slow, studied French. “He comes here to rest sometimes 
out of the noise ; he was very tired to-day, and I think 
ill, would he have confessed it.” 

“Indeed I” Her eyes fell on him with compassion ; he 
had fallen into an attitude of much grace, and of utter ex- 
haustion ; his head was uncovered and rested on one arm, 
so that the face was turned upward. With a woman’s ra- 
pid, comprehensive glance, she saw the dark shadow, like 
a bruise, under his closed, aching eyes, she saw the weary 
pain upon his forehead, she saw the whiteness of his hands, 
the slenderness of his wrists, the softness of his hair ; she 
saw, as she had seen before, that whatever he might be 
now, in some past time he had been a man of gentle blood, 
of courtly bearing. 

“ He is a Chasseur d’Afrique ?” she asked the Moslem. 

“ Yes, madame. I think he must have been some- 

thing very different some day.” 

She did not answer; she stood with her thoughtful eyes 
gazing on the worn-out soldier. 

“He saved me once, madame, at much risk to himself, 


THE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KING. 359 

from the savagery of some Turcos,” the old man went on 
“Of course he is always welcome under my roof. The 
companionship he has must be bitter to him, I fancy; they 
do say he would have had his officer’s grade, and the 
cross, too, long before now, if it were not for his Colonel’s 
hatred.” 

“Ah I I have seen him before now; he carves in ivory. 
I suppose he has a good sale for those things with you ?” 

The Moor looked up in amazement. 

“In ivory, madame ? — he f Allah-il-Allah ! I never 
heard of it. It is strange ” 

“Very strange. Doubtless you would have given him 
a good price for them ?” 

“ Surely I would; any price he should have wished. Do 
I not owe him ray life ?” 

At that moment little Musjid let fall a valuable coffee- 
tray, inlaid with amber; his master with muttered apology 
hastened to the scene of accident; the noise startled Cecil, 
and his eyes unclosed to all the dreamy fantastic colors of 
the place, and met those bent on him in musing pity — saw 
that lustrous, haughty, delicate head bending slightly down 
through the many-colored shadows. 

He thought he was dreaming, yet on instinct he rose, 
staggering slightly, for sharp pain was still darting through 
his head and temples. 

“ Madame ! pardon me ! Was I sleeping ?” . 

“You were, and rest again. You look ill?’’ she said, 
gently, and there was, for a moment, less of that accent 
in her voice, which the night before had marked so dis- 
tinctly, so pointedly, the line of demarkation between a 
Princess of Spain and a soldier of Africa. 

“I thank you, I ail nothing.” 

He had no sense that he did, in the presence of that face 
which had the beauty of his old life ; under the charm of 
that voice which had the music of his buried years. 

“ I fear that is scarcely true ?” she answered him. “You 
look in pain ; though as a soldier, perhaps, you will not 
own it?” 

“A headache from the sun — no more, madame.” 

He was careful not again to forget the social gulf which 
yawned between them. 


360 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“That is quite bad enough! Your service must be 
severe ?” 

“In Africa, Miladi, one cannot expect indulgence. ” 

“I suppose not. You have served long?”^ 

“ Twelve years, madame.” 

“And your name ?” 

“Louis Victor.” She fancied there was a slight abrupt- 
ness in the reply, as though he were about to add some 
other name, and checked himself. 

She entered it in the little book from which she had taken 
her bank-notes. 

“ I may be able to serve you,” she said, as she wrote. 
“I will speak of you to the Marshal; and when I return 
to Paris, I may have an opportunity to bring your name 
before the Emperor. He is as rapid as his uncle to reward 
military merit; but he has not his uncle’s opportunities for 
personal observation of his soldiers.” 

The color flushed his forehead. 

“You do me much honor,” he said, rapidly, “but if you 
would gratify me, madame, do not seek to do anything of 
the kind.” 

“And why? Do you not even desire the cross ?” 

“I desire nothing, except to be forgotten.” 

“You seek what others dread then?” 

“ It may be so. At any rate, if you would serve me, 
madame, never say what can bring me into notice.” 

She regarded him with much surprise, with some slight 
sense of annoyance; she had bent far in tendering her in- 
fluence at the French court to a private soldier, and his 
rejection of it seemed as ungracious as it was inexplicable. 

At that moment the Moor joined them. 

“ Miladi has told me, Monsieur Victor, that you are a 
first-rate carver of ivories. How is it you have never let 
me benefit by your art?” 

“ My things are not worth a sou,” muttered Cecil, hur- 
riedly. 

“You do them great injustice, and yourself also,” said 
the grande dame , more coldly than she had before spoken. 
“Your carvings are singularly perfect, and should bring 
you considerable returns.” 

“Why have you never shown them to me at least?” 


THE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KINO. 361 

pursued Ben Arsli — “why not have given me my op- 
tion ?” 

The blood flushed Cecil’s face again ; he turned to the 
Princess. 

“ I withheld them, madame, not because he would have 
underpriced, but overpriced them. He rates a trifling act of 
mine, of long ago, so unduly.” 

She bent her head in silence; yet a more grateful com- 
prehension of his motive she could not have given than her 
glance alone gave. 

Ben Arsli stroked his great beard ; more moved than his 
Moslem dignity would show. 

“Always so!” he muttered, “always so! My son, in 
some life before this, was not generosity your ruin ?” 

“Miladi was about to purchase that lamp?” asked Cecil, 
avoiding the question. “ Her Highness will not find any- 
thing like it in all Algiers.” 

The lamp was taken down, and the conversation turned 
from himself. 

“ May I bear it to your carriage, madame ?” he asked, 
as she moved to leave, having made it her own, while her 
footman carried out the smaller articles she had bought to 
the equipage. She bowed in silence ; she was very exclu- 
sive, she was not wholly satisfied with herself for having 
conversed thus with a Chasseur d’Afrique in a Moor’s 
bazaar. Still, she vaguely felt pity for this man ; she 
equally vaguely desired to serve him. 

“Wait, Monsieur Victor 1” she said as he closed the 
door of her carriage. “I accepted your chessmen last 
night, but you are very certain that it is impossible I can 
retain them on such terms.” 

A shadow darkened his face. 

“ Let your dogs break them then, madame. They shall 
not come back to me.” 

“ You mistake — I did not mean that I would send them 
back. I simply desire to offer you some equivalent for 
them. There must be something that you wish for ? — 
something which would be acceptable to you in the life 
you lead ?” 

“ I have already named the only thing I desire.” 

He had been solicitous to remember and sustain the 

31 


362 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


enormous difference in their social degrees ; but at the 
offer of her gifts, of her patronage, of her recompense, the 
pride of his old life rose up to meet her own. 

“To be forgotten? A sad wish 1 Nay, surely life in 
a regiment of Africa cannot be so cloudless that it cau 
create in you no other ?” 

“ It is not. I have another.” 

“ Then tell it to me ; it shall be gratified.” 

“It is to enjoy a luxury long ago lost forever. It is — 
to be allowed to give the slight courtesy of a gentleman 
without being tendered the wage of a servant.” 

She understood him ; she was moved, too, by the inflex- 
ion of his voice. She was not so cold, not so negligent, 
as the world called her. 

“ I had passed my word to grant it ; I cannot retract,” 
she answered him, after a pause. “ I will press nothing 
more on you. But — as an obligation to me — can you 
find no way in which a rouleau of gold would benefit your 
men ?” 

“ No way that I can take it for them. But, if you care 
indeed to do them a charity, a little wine, a little fruit, a few 
flowers (for there are those among them who love flowers), 
sent to the hospital, will bring many benedictions on your 
name, madame. They lie in infinite misery there 1” 

“ I will remember,” she said simply, while a thoughtful 
sadness passed over her brilliant face. “Adieu, M. le Ca- 
poral ; and if you should think better of your choice, and 
will allow your name to be mentioned by me to his Ma- 
jesty, send me word through my people. There is my 
card.” 

The carriage whirled away down the crooked street ; he 
stood under the tawny awning of the Moorish house, with 
the thin glazed card in his hand. On it was printed : 

“ Mme . la Princesse Corona d’Amagiie , 

Hotel Corona , Paris.” 

In the corner was written, “Villa Aiaussa, Algiers.” lie 
thrust it in the folds of his sash, and turned within. 

“ Do you know her ?” he asked Ben Arsli. 

The old man shook his head. 


THE MISTRESS OP THE WHITE KINO. 


363 


“ She is the most beautiful of thy many fair Frankish 
women. I never saw her till to-day. She seemed to have 
an interest in thee, my son. But listen here. Touching 
these ivory toys — if thou dost not bring henceforth to me 
all the work in them that thou doest, thou shalt never come 
here more to meet the light of her eyes.” 

Cecil smiled and pressed the Moslem’s hand. 

“ I kept them away because you would have given me a 
hundred piastres for what had not been worth one. As 
for her eyes, they are stars that shine on another world 
than an African trooper’s. So best !” 

Yet they were stars of which he thought more, as he 
wended his way back to the barracks, than of the splendid 
constellations of the Algerian evening that shone with all 
the luster of the day, but with a soft enchanted light 
which transfigured sea, and earth, and sky as never did the 
day’s full glow, as he returned to the mechanical duties, to 
the thankless services, to the distasteful meal, to the riot- 
ous mirth, to the coarse comradeship, which seemed to him 
to-night more bitter than they had ever done since his very 
identity, his very existence, had been killed and buried 
past recall, past resurrection, under the kepi d’ordonnance 
of a Chasseur d’Afrique. 

Meantime, the Princesse Corona drove homeward — 
homeward to where a temporary home had been made by 
her in the most elegaut of the many snow-white villas that 
stud the sides of the Sahel and face the bright bow of the 
sunlit bay ; a villa with balconies, and awnings, and cool, 
silent chambers, and rich, glowing gardens, and a broad, 
low roof, half hidden in bay and orange and myrtle and 
basilica, and the liquid sound of waters bubbling beneath 
a riotous luxuriance of blossom. 

Madame la Princesse passed from her carriage to her 
own morning-room, and sank down on a couch a little list- 
less and weary with her search among the treasures of the 
Algerine bazaars. It was purposeless work, after all. 
Had she not bronzes, and porcelains, and bric-a-brac, and 
vbjets dCari in profusion in her Roman villa, her Parisian 
hotel, her great grim palace in Estremadura. 

‘‘Not one of those things do I want — not one shall I 
look at twice The money would have been better at the 


3d4 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


soldiers’ hospital,” she thought, while her eyes dwelt on a 
chess-table near her — a table on which the mimic hosts of 
Chasseurs and Arabs were ranged in opposite squadrons. 

She took the White King in her hand and gazed at it 
with a certain interest. 

“ That man has been noble once,” she thought. “What 
a fate ! — what a cruel fate 1” 

It touched- her to great pity ; although proud with too 
intense a pride, her nature was exceedingly generous, and, 
when once moved, deeply compassionate. The unerring 
glance of a woman habituated to the first society of Eu- 
rope had told her that the accent, the bearing, the tone, 
the features of this soldier, who only asked of life “obliv- 
ion,” were those of one originally of gentle blood ; and 
the dignity and patience of his acceptance of the indigni- 
ties which his present rank entailed on him had not escaped 
her any more than the delicate beauty of his face as she 
had seen it, weary, pale, and shadowed with pain, in the 
unconscious revelation of sleep. 

“How bitter his life must be!” she mused. “When 
Philip comes, perhaps he will know some way to aid him. 
And yet — who can serve a man who only desires to be for- 
gotten ?” 

Then, with a certain impatient sense of some absurd 
discrepancy, of some unseemly occupation, in her thus 
dwelling on the wishes and the burdens of a sous-officier 
of Light Cavalry, she laughed a little, and put the White 
Chief back once more in his place. Yet even as she set 
the king among his mimic forces, the very carvings them- 
selves served to retain their artist in her memory. 

There was about them an indescribable elegance, an ex- 
ceeding grace and beauty, which spoke of a knowledge of 
art and of refinement of taste far beyond those of a mere 
military amateur in the one who had produced them. 

“What could bring a man of that talent, with that ad- 
dress, into the ranks ?” she mused. “ Persons of good 
family, of once fine position, come here, they say, and live 
and die unrecognized under the Imperial flag. It is usu- 
ally some dishonor that drives them out of their own 
worlds ; it may be so with him. Yet he does not look like 
one whom shame has touched j he is proud still — prouder 


THE MISTRESS OP TIIE WHITE KINO. 365 

than he knows. More likely it is the old, old story — a high 
name and a narrow fortune — the ruin of thousands ! He 
is French, I suppose ; -a French aristocrat who has played 
au roi depouille, most probably, and buried himself and 
his history forever beneath those two names that tell one 
nothing — Louis Victor. Well, it is no matter of mine. 
Very possibly he is a mere adventurer with a good man- 
ner. This army here is a pot-pourri, they say, of all the 
varied scoundrelisms of Europe I” 

She left the chess-table and went onward to the dressing 
and bath and bed-chambers, which opened in one suite 
from her boudoir, and resigned herself to the hands of 
her attendants for her dinner-toilet. 

The Moslem had said aright of her beauty; and now, as 
her splendid hair was unloosened and gathered up afresh 
with a crescent-shaped comb of gold that was not brighter 
than the tresses themselves, the brilliant, haughty, thought- 
ful face was of a truth, as he had said, the fairest that had 
ever come from the Frankish shores to the hot African 
sea-board. Many beside the old Moslem had thought it 
“ the fairest that e’er the sun shone on,” and held one grave, 
lustrous glance of the blue imperial eyes above aught else 
on earth. Many had loved her — all without return. Yet, 
although only twenty years had passed over her proud 
head, the Princess Corona d?Araagiie had been wedded and 
been widowed. 

Wedded, with no other sentiment than that of a certain 
pity and a certain honor for the man whose noble Spanish 
name she took. Widowed, by a death that was the seal 
of her marriage-sacrament, and left her his wife only in 
name and law. 

The marriage had left no chain upon her; it had only 
made her mistress of wide wealth, of that villa on the 
Sicilian Sea, of that light spacious palace-dwelling in Paris 
that bore her name, of that vast majestic old castle throned 
on brown Estremaduran crags, and looking down on 
mighty woods of cork and chestnut, and flashing streams 
of falling water hurling through the gorges. The death 
:ad left no regret upon her; it only gave her for awhile 
a graver shadow over the brilliancy of her youth and 
of her beauty, and gave her for always — or for so long 


366 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


at least, as she so chose to use it — a plea for that in- 
difference to men’s worship of her which their sex called 
heartlessness, which her own sex thought an ultra-refined 
coquetry, and which was in real truth neither the one nor 
the other, but simply the negligence of a woman very dif- 
ficult to touch, and, as it had seemed, impossible to charm. 

None knew quite aright the history of that marriage. 
Some were wont to whisper it “ambition;” and, when 
that whisper came round to her, her splendid lips would 
curl with as splendid a scorn. 

“ Do they not know that scarce any marriage can mate 
us equally?” she would ask; for she came of a great Line 
that thought few royal branches on equality with it; and 
she cherished as things of strictest creed the legends that 
gave her race, with its amber hair and its eyes of sapphire 
blue, the blood of Arthur in their veins. 

Of a surety it was not ambition that had allied her, on 
his death-bed, with Beltran Corona d’Amagiie; but what 
it was the world could never tell precisely. The world 
would not have believed it if it had heard the truth — the 
truth that it had been, in a different fashion, a gleam of 
something of the same compassion that now made her 
merciful to a common trooper of Africa which had wedded 
her to the dead Spanish Prince — compassion which, with 
many another rich and generous thing, lay beneath her 
coldness and her pride as the golden stamen lies folded 
within the white virginal chill cup of the lily. 

She had never felt a touch of even passing preference to 
any one out of the many who had sought her high-born 
beauty; she was too proud to be easily moved to such 
selection, and she was far too habituated to homage to be 
wrought upon by it ever so slightly. She was of a noble, 
sun-lit, gracious nature; she had been always happy, 
always obeyed, always caressed, always adored; it had 
rendered her immeasurably contemptuous of flattery; it 
had rendered her a little contemptuous of pain. She had 
never had aught to regret; it was not possible that she 
could realize what regret was. 

Hence men called and found her very cold ; yet those 
of her own kin whom she loved knew that the heart of a 
summer rose was not warmer, nor sweeter, nor richer than 


THE MISTRESS OF THE "WHITE KING. 


367 


hers. And first among these was her brother — at once 
her guardian and* her slave — who thought her perfect, and 
would no more have crossed her will than he would have 
set his foot on her beautiful imperial head. Corona 
d’Amague had been his friend ; the only one for whom he 
had ever sought to break her unvarying indifference to her 
lovers, but for whom even he had pleaded vainly until one 
autumn season, when they had stayed together at a great 
archducal castle in South Austria. In one of the forest- 
glades, awaiting the fanfare of the hunt, she rejected, for 
the third time, the passionate supplication of the superb 
noble who ranked with the D’Ossuna and the Medina- 
Sidonia. He rode from her in great bitterness, in grief 
that no way moved her — she was importuned with these 
entreaties to weariness. An hour after he was brought 
past her, wounded and senseless; he had saved her brother 
from imminent death at his own cost, and the tusks of the 
mighty Styrian boar had plunged through and through his 
frame, as they had met in the narrow woodland glade. 

“ lie will be a cripple — a paralyzed cripple — for life !” 
said the one whose life had been saved by his devotion to 
her that night; and his lips shook a little under his golden 
beard as he spoke. 

She looked at him ; she loved him well, and no homage 
to herself could have moved her as this sacrifice for him 
had done. 

“You think he will live?” she asked. 

“ They say it is sure. He may live on to old age. But 
how? My God! what a death in life! And all for my 
sake, in my stead !” 

She was silent several moments ; then she raised her 
face, a little paler than it had been, but with a passionless 
resolve set on it. 

“Philip, we do not leave our debts unpaid. Go; tell 
him I will be his wife.” 

“ His wife — now ! Yenetia ! ” 

“Go !” she said, briefly. “ Tell him what I say.” 

“ But what a sacrifice ! In your beauty, your youth ” 

“ He did not count cost. Are we less generous ? Go — 
tell him.” 

He was told ; and was repaid. Such a light of unut- 


3G3 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


terable joy burnt through the misty agony of his eyes as 
never, it seemed to those who saw, had* beamed before in 
mortal eyes. He did not once hesitate at the acceptance 
of her self-surrender; he only pleaded that the marriage 
ceremony should pass between them that night. 

There were notaries and many priests in the great ducal 
household; all was done as he desired. She consented 
without wavering; she had passed her word, she would 
not have withdrawn it if it had been a thousand times 
more bitter in its fulfillment. The honor of her house 
was dearer to her than any individual happiness. This 
man for them had lost peace, health, joy, strength, every 
hope of life ; to dedicate her own life to him, as he had 
vainly prayed her when in the full glow and vigor of 
his manhood, was the only means by which their vast debt 
to him could be paid. To so pay it was the instant choice 
of her high code of honor, and of her generosity that 
would not be outrun. Moreover, she pitied him unspeaka- 
bly, though her heart had no tenderness for him ; she had 
dismissed him with cold disdain, and he had gone from her 
to save the only life she loved, and was stretched a stricken, 
broken, helpless wreck, with endless years of pain and 
weariness before him I 

At midnight, in the great dim magnificence of the state 
chamber where he lay, and with the low, soft chanting of 
the chapel choir from afar echoing through the incensed 
air, she bent her haughty head down over his couch, and 
the marriage benediction was spoken over them. 

His voice was faint and broken, but it had the thrill of 
a passionate triumph in it. When the last words were 
uttered, he lay awhile, exhausted, silent, only looking ever 
upward at her with his dark, dreamy eyes, in which the old 
love glanced so strangely through the blindness of pain. 
Then he smiled as the last echo of the choral melodies 
died softly on the silence. 

“ That is joy enough ! Ah 1 have no fear. With the 
dawn you will be free once more. Did you think that I 
could have taken your sacrifice ? I knew well, let them 
say as they would, that I should not live the night through. 
But, lest existence should linger to curse me, to chain you, 
X rent the linen bands off my wounds an hour ago. All 


THE MISTRESS OP THE "WHITE KING. 3b9 

flieir science will not put back the life now! My limbs 
are dead, and the cold steals up ! Ab, love ! ah, love ! 
You never thought how men can suffer! But have no 
grief for me. I am happy. Bend your head down, and 
lay your lips on mine once. You are my own ! — death is 
sweeter than life I” 

And before sunrise he died. 

Some shadow from that fatal and tragic midnight mar- 
riage rested on her still. Though she was blameless, some 
vague remorse ever haunted her : though she had been so 
wholly guiltless of it, this death for her sake ever seemed 
in some sort of her bringing. Men thought her only 
colder, only prouder; but they erred. She was one of 
those women who, beneath the courtly negligence of a chill 
manner, are capable of infinite tenderness, infinite nobility, 
and infinite self-reproach. 

A great French painter once, in Rome, looking on her 
from a distance, shaded his eyes with his hand, as if her 
beauty, like the sun, dazzled him. “Exquisite — superb!” 
he muttered ; and he was a man whose own ideals were so 
matchless that living women rarely could wring out his 
praise. “ She is nearly perfect, your Princess Corona !” 

“Nearly!” cried a Roman sculptor. “What, in 
Heaven’s name, can she want ?” 

“ Only one thing !” 

“ And that is ?” 

11 To have loved.” 

Wherewith he turned into the Greco. 

He had found the one flaw — and it was still there. 
What he missed in her was still wanting. 

Y 


370 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 

“ V^la ce que c'est la gloire — au grabat /” 

The contemptuous sentence was crushed through Cigar- 
ette’s tight-pressed bright-red lips, with an irony sadder 
than tears. She was sitting on the edge of a grabat , hard 
as wood, comfortless as a truss of straw, and looking 
down the long hospital-room, with its endless rows of beds 
and its hot sun shining blindingly on its glaring white- 
washed walls. 

She was well known and well loved there. When her 
little brilliant-hued figure fluttered, like some scarlet bird 
of Africa, down the dreary length of those chambers of 
misery, bloodless lips, close-clinched in torture, would stir 
with a smile, would move with a word of welcome. Xo 
tender-voiced dove-eyed Sister of Orders of Mercy, gliding 
gray and soft, and like a living psalm of consolation, beside 
those couches of misery, bore with them the infinite inex- 
pressible charm that the Friend of the Flag brought to 
the sufferers. The Sisters were good, were gentle, were 
valued as they merited by the greatest blackguard prostrate 
there; but they never smiled, they never took the dying 
heart of a man back with one glance to the days of his 
childhood, they never gave a sweet wild snatch of song 
like a bird’s on a spring-blossoming bough that thrilled 
through half-dead senses, with a thousand voices from a 
thousand buried hours. “But the Little One,” as said a 
gaunt gray-bearded Zephyr once, where he lay with the 
death-chill stealing slowly up his jagged, torn frame — “the 
Little One — do you see — she is youth, she is life ; she is all 
we have lost. That is her charm 1 The Sisters are good 
women, they are very good ; but they only pity us. The 
Little One, she loves us. That is the difference ; do you 
see ?” 

It was all the difference — a wide difference ; she loved 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE 


371 


them all, withHhe warmth and fire of her young heart, for 
sake of France and of their common Flag. And though 
she was but a wild wayward mischievous gamin, a gamin all 
over though in a girl’s form, men would tell in camp and 
hospital, with great tears coursing down their brown scarred 
cheeks, how her touch would lie softly as a snowflake on 
their heated foreheads, how her watch would be kept by 
them through long nights of torment, how her gifts of 
golden trinkets would be sold or pawned as soon as re- 
ceived to buy them ice or wine, and how in their delirium 
the sweet fresh voice of the child of the regiment would 
soothe them, singing above their wretched beds some carol 
or chant of their own native province, which it always 
seemed she must know by magic; for, were it Basque or 
Breton, were it a sea-lay of Vendee or a mountain-song 
of the Orientales, were it a mere ringing rhyme for the 
mules of Alsace, or a wild bold romanesque from the coun- 
try of Berri, — Cigarette knew each and all, and never 
erred by any chance, but ever sung to every soldier the 
rhythm familiar from his infancy, the melody of his mother’s 
cradle-song and of his first love’s lips. And there had 
been times when those songs suddenly breaking through 
the darkness of night, suddenly lulling the fiery anguish of 
wounds, had made the men who one hour before had been 
like mad dogs, like goaded tigers, men full of the lusts of 
slaughter and the lust of the senses, and chained powerless 
and blaspheming to a bed of agony, tremble and shudder 
at themselves, and turn their faces to the wall and weep 
like children, and fall asleep, at length, with wondering 
dreams of God. 

“ V'la ce que c’est la gloire — au grabat!” said Cigar- 
ette, now grinding her pretty teeth. She was in her most 
revolutionary and reckless mood, drumming the rataplan 
with her spurred heels, and sitting smoking on the corner 
of old Miou-Matou’s mattress. Miou-Matou, who had 
acquired that title among the joyeux for his scientific 
powers of making a tomcat into a stew, so divine that you 
could not tell it from rabbit, being laid up with a ball in 
his hip, a spear-head between his shoulders, a rib or so 
broken, and one or two other little trifling casualties. 

Miou-Matou, who looked very like an old grizzly bear, 


372 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


laughed in the depths of his great hairy chfest. “ Dream 
of glory, and end on a grabat ! Just so, just so. And 
yet one has pleasures — to sweep off an Arbico’s neck nice 
aud clean — swish 1” and he described a circle with his lean 
brawny arm with as infinite a relish as a dilettante, grown 
blind, would listen thirstily to the description of an exqui- 
site bit of Faience or Della Quercia work.- 

“ Pleasures 1 My God ! Infinite, endless misery !” mur- 
mured a man on her right hand. He was not thirty years 
of age, with a delicate, dark, beautiful head that might 
have passed as model to a painter for a St. John. He 
was dying fast of the most terrible form of pulmonary 
maladies. 

Cigarette flashed her bright falcon glance over him. 

“Well ! is it not misery that is glory ?” 

“We think that it is when we are children. God help 
us !” murmured the man who lay dying of lung-disease. 

“Ouf ! Then we think rightly ! Glory ! Is it the cross, 
the star, the baton ? No 1* He who wins those runs his 
horse up on a hill, out of shot range, and watches through 
his glass how his troops surge up, wave on wave, in the 
great sea of blood. It is misery that is glory — the misery, 
that toils with bleeding feet under burning suns without 
complaint ; that lies half-dead through the long night with 
but one care — to keep the torn flag free from the conqueror’s 
touch; that bears the rain of blows in punishment, rathe: 
than break silence and buy release by betrayal of a comrade’s 
trust; that is beaten like the mule, and galled like the 
horse, and starved like the camel, and housed like the dog, 
and yet does the thing which is right, and the thing which 
is brave despite all ; that suffers, and endures, and pours 
out his blood like water to the thirsty sands, whose thirst 
is never stilled, and goes up in the morning sun to the 


* Having received ardent reproaches from field-officers and com- 
manders of divisions for the injustice done their services by this 
sentence, I beg to assure them that the sentiment is Cigarette's; — ■ 
not mine. I should be very sorry for an instant to seem to depre- 
ciate that “genius of command,” without whoso guidance an army 
is but a rabble, or to underrate that noblest courage which accepts 
the burden of arduous responsibilities and of duties as bitter in 
anxiety as they are precious in honor. 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 373 

combat, as though death were paradise that the Arbicos 
dream, knowing the while, that no paradise waits save the 
crash of the hoof through the throbbing brain, or the roll 
of the gun-carriage over the writhing limb. That is glory. 
The misery that is heroism because France needs it, because 
a soldier’s honor wills it. That is glory. It is here to-day 
in the hospital as it never is in the Cour des Prines, where 
the glittering host of the marshals gather 1” 

Her voice rang clear as a clarion ; the warm blood burnt 
ic her bright cheeks; the swift, fiery, pathetic eloquence 
of her nation moved her, and moved strangely the hearts 
of her hearers; for though she could neither read nor 
write, there was in Cigarette the germ of that power which 
the world mistily calls genius. 

There were men lying in that sick- chamber brutalized, 
crime-stained, ignorant as the bullocks of the plains, and, 
like them, reared and driven for the slaughter, yet there 
was not one among them to whom some ray of light failed 
to come from those words, through whom some thrill failed 
to pass as they heard them. Out yonder in the free air, 
in the barrack-court, or on the plains, the Little One would 
rate them furiously, mock them mercilessly, rally them with 
the flat of a saber, if they were mutinous, and lash them 
with the most pitiless ironies if they were grumbling ; but 
here, in the hospital, the Little One loved them, and they 
knew it, and that love gave a flute-like music to the pas- 
sion of her voice. 

Then she laughed, and drummed the rataplan again with 
her brass heel. 

“All the same; one is not in paradise au grabat , eh, 
Phre Matou?” she said curtly. She was half impatient 
of her own momentary lapse into enthusiasm, and she 
knew the temper of her “children” as accurately as a 
bugler knows the notes of the reveille — knew that they 
loved to laugh even with the death-rattle in their throats, 
and with their hearts half breaking over a comrade’s 
corpse, would cry in burlesque mirth, “Ah, le bon zig l 
11 a avale sa cartouche /”* 


* “Ah, the good fellow! He’s swallowed his own cartouche l 

32 


374 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Paradise!” growled Pere Matou. “Ouf! Who wants 
that ? Ef one had a few bidons of brandy, now ” 

“Brandy? Oh-he. You are to be much more of aris- 
tocrats now than that!” cried Cigarette, with an im- 
measurable satire curling on her rosy, piquant lips. The 
Silver Pheasants have taken to patronize you. Ma cantche! 
if I were you, I would not touch a glass, nor eat a fig ; 
you will not, if you have the spirit of a rabbit. You ! 
Fed like dogs with the leavings of her table — pardieu ! 
that is not for soldiers of France !” 

“Eh? What dost thou say?” growled Miou-Matou, 
peering up under his gray, shaggy brows. 

“ Only that a grande dame has sent you champagne. 
That is all. Sapristi ! how easy it is to play the saint 
and Samaritan with two wards to one’s maitre d’hotel, and 
a rouleau of gold that one never misses ! The rich they 
can buy all things, you see, even heaven, so cheap !” With 
which withering satire Cigarette left Pere Matou iu the 
conviction that he must be already dead and among the 
angels if the people began to talk of champagne to him, and 
flitting down between the long rows of beds with the old 
disabled veterans tended them, skimmed her way, who 
like a bird as she was, into another great chamber, filled, 
like the first, with suffering in all stages and at all years, 
from the boy-conscript, tossing in African fever, to the 
white-haired campaigner of a hundred wounds. 

Cigarette was as caustic as a Voltaire this morning. 
Coming through the entrance of the hospital, she had 
casually heard that Madame la Princesse Corona d’Ama- 
giie had made a gift of singular munificence and mercy to 
the invalid soldiers — a gift of wine, of fruit, of flowers, 
that would brighten their long dreary hours for many 
weeks. Who Madame la Princesse might be she knew 
nothing; but the title was enough, she was a silver pheas- 
ant — bah ! And Cigarette hated the aristocrats — when 
they were of the sex feminine. “An aristocrat in adver- 
sity is an eagle,” she would say; “but an aristocrat in 
prosperity is a peacock.” Which was the reason why she 
flouted glittering young nobles with all the insolence imag- 
inable, but took the part of “Marquise,” of “ Bel-a-faire- 
peur,” and of such wanderers like^ them, who had buried 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OP FRANCE. 375 

their sixteen quartering under the black shield of tho 
Battalion of Africa. With a word here and a touch there, 
tender, soft, and bright, since, however ironic her mood, she 
never brought anything except sunshine to those who lay in 
such sore need of it, beholding the sun in the heavens only 
through the narrow chink of a hospital window. At last 
she reached the bed she came most specially to visit — a bed 
on which was stretched the emaciated form of a man once 
beautiful as a Greek dream of a god. 

The dews of a great agony stood on his forehead ; his 
teeth were tight clinched on lips white and parched ; and 
his immense eyes, with the heavy circles round them, were 
fastened on vacancy with the yearning misery that gleams 
in the eyes of a Spanish bull when it is struck again and 
again by the matador, and yet cannot die. 

She bent over him softly. 

“ Tiens, Monsieur Leon! I have brought you some ice.” 

His weary eyes turned on her gratefully; he sought to 
speak, but the effort brought the spasm on his lungs afresh ; 
it shook him with horrible violence from head to foot, and 
the foam on his auburn beard was red with blood. 

There was no one by to watch him ; he was sure to die ; 
a week sooner or later — what mattered it? He was use- 
less as a soldier ; good only to be thrown into a pit, with 
some quicklime to hasten destruction and do the work of 
the slower earthworms. 

Cigarette said not a word, but she took out of some vine- 
leaves a cold, hard lump of ice, and held it to him ; the 
delicious coolness and freshness in that parching noontide 
keht stilled the convulsion ; his eyes thanked her, though 
his lips could not; he lay panting, exhausted, but relieved ; 
and she — thoughtfully for her — slid herself down on the 
floor, and began singing low and sweetly as a fairy might 
sing on the raft of a water-lily leaf. She sung quadriales, 
'.to be sure, Beranger’s songs and odes of the camp; for 
she knew of no hymn but the Marsellaise , and her chants 
were all chants like the Laus Veneris. But the voice that 
gave them was pure as the voice of a thrush in the spring, 
and the cadence of its music was so silvery-sweet that it 
soothed like a spell all the fever-racked brains, all the 
pain- tortured soirits. 


376 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


"Ah ! that is sweet,” murmured the dying man. “Jb is 
like the brooks — like the birds — like the winds in the 
leaves.” 

He was but half conscious ; but the lulling of that glid- 
ing voice brought him peace. And Cigarette sung on, 
only moving to reach him some fresh touch of ice, while 
time traveled on, and the first afternoon shadows crept 
across the bare floor. Every now and then, dimly through 
the openings of the windows, came a distant roll of drums, 
a burst of military music, an echo of the laughter of a 
crowd ; and then her head went up eagerly, an impatient 
shade swept across her expressive face. 

It was a fete day in Algiers ; there were flags and 
banners fluttering from the houses, there were Arab races 
and Arab manoeuvres, there was a review of troops for 
some foreign general, there were all the mirth and the 
mischief that she loved, and that never went on without 
her, and she knew well enough that from mouth to mouth 
there was sure to be asking, “ Mais ou done est Cigarette V } 
Cigarette, who was the Generalissima of Africa ! 

But still she never moved ; though all her vivacious life 
was longing to be out and in their midst, on the back of a 
desert horse, on the head of a huge drum, perched on the 
iron support of a high-hung lantern, standing on a cannon 
while the Horse Artillery swept full gallop, firing down a 
volley of argot on the hot homage of a hundred lovers, 
drinkifig creamy liqueurs and filling her pockets with bon- 
bons from handsome subalterns and aides-de-camp, doing 
as she had done ever since she could remember her first 
rataplan. But she never moved. She knew that in the 
general gala these sick-beds would be left more deserted 
r and less soothed than ever. She knew, too, that it was for 
the sake of this man, lying dying here from the lunge of a 
Bedouin lance through his lungs, that the ivory wreaths and 
crosses and statuettes had been sold. 

And Cigarette had done more than this ere now many a 
time for her "children.” 

The day stole on ; Leon Ramon lay very quiet ; the ice 
for his chest and the song for his ear gave him that semi- 
oblivion, dreamy and comparatively painless, which was the 
only mercy which could come to him. All the chamber 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 3^ 

was unusually still ; on three of the beds the sheet had 
been drawn over the face of the sleepers, who had sunk to 
a last sleep since the morning rose. The shadows length- 
ened, the hours followed one another; Cigarette sang on 
to herself with few pauses : whenever she did so pause to 
lay soaked linen on the soldier’s hot forehead, or to tend 
him gently in those paroxysms that wrenched the clotted 
blood from off his lungs, there was a light on her face that 
did not come from the golden heat of the African sun. 

Such a light those who know well the Children of France 
may have seen, in battle or in insurrection, grow beautiful 
upon the young face of a conscript or of boy-insurgent as 
he lifted a dying comrade, or pushed to the front to be 
slain in another’s stead ; the face that a moment before had 
been keen for the slaughter as the eyes of a kite, and reck- 
lessly gay as the saucy refrain the lips caroled. 

A step sounded on the bare boards ; she looked up ; and 
the wounded man raised his weary lids with a gleam of 
gladness under them ; Cecil bent above his couch. 

“ Dear Leon 1 how is it with you ? ” 

His voice was softened to infinite tenderness ; L4on 
Ramon had been for many a year his comrade and his 
friend ; an artist of Paris, a man of marvelous genius, of 
high idealic creeds, who, in a fatal moment of rash de- 
spair, had flung his talents, his broken fortunes, his pure 
and noble spirit, into the fiery furnace of the hell of military 
Africa; and now lay dying here, a common soldier, for- 
gotten as though he were already in his grave. 

“The review is just over. I got ten minutes to spare, 
and came to you the instant I could,” pursued Cecil. “ See 
here what I bring you I You, with your artist’s soul, will 
feel yourself all but well when you look on these !” 

He spoke with a hopefulness he could never feel, for he 
knew that the life of Leon Ramon was doomed ; and as 
the other strove to gain breath enough to answer him, he 
gently motioned him to silence, and placed on his bed some 
peaches bedded deep in moss and circled round with ste- 
phanotis, with magnolia, with roses, with other rarer flowers 
still. 

The face of the artist-soldier lightened with a longing 
joy ; his lips quivered. 

32 * 


378 


UNDER TWO FLAGS, 


“ Ah, God ! they have the fragrance of my France P 

Cecil said nothing, but moved them nearer in to the 
clasp of his eager hands. Cigarette he did not see. 

There were some moments of silence, while the dark eyes 
of the dying man thirstly dwelt on the beauty of the flowers, 
and his dry ashen lips seemed to drink in their perfumes as 
those athirst drink in water. 

“ They are beautiful,” he said faintly, at length. “ They 
have our youth in them. How came you by them, dear 
friend ? ” 

“ They are not due to me,” answered Cecil, hurriedly. 
“ Madame la Princesse Corona sends them to you. She 
has sent great gifts to the hospital — wines, fruits, a profu- 
sion of flowers, such as those. Through her, these miser- 
able chambers will bloom for awhile like a garden ; and the 
best wines of Europe will slake your thirst in lieu of that 
miserable tisane .” 

“ It is very kind,” murmured Leon Ramon, languidly ; 
life was too feeble in him to leave him vivid pleasures in 
aught. “ But I am ungrateful. La Cigarette here, — she 
has been so good, so tender, so pitiful. For once I have 
almost not missed you 1” 

Cigarette, thus alluded to, sprang to her feet with her 
head tossed back, and all her cynicism back again ; a hot 
color was on her cheeks, the light had passed from her face, 
she struck her white teeth together. She had thought 
“ Bel-a-faire-peur ” chained to his regiment in the field of 
manoeuvre, or she would never have come thither to tend 
his friend. * She had felt happy in her self-sacrifice ; she 
had grown into a gentle, pensive, merciful mood, singing 
here by the side of the dying soldier, and now the first thing 
she heard was of the charities of Madame la Princesse ! 

That was all her reward ! Cigarette received the re- 
compense that usually comes to generous natures which 
have strung themselves to some self-surrender that costs 
them dear. 

Cecil looked at her surprised, and smiled. 

“ Ma belle , is it you ? That is, indeed, good. You 
were the good angel of my life the other night, and to-day 
come to bring consolation to my friend ” 

“‘Good angel P Chut, M. Victor! One does not 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OP FRANCE. 3 T9 

know those mots sucres in Algiers. There is nothing of 
the angel about me, I hope. Your friend, too ! Prut- 
tut ! Do you think I have never been used to taking care 
of my comrades in hospital before you played the sick- 
nurse here ?” 

She spoke with all her brusque petulance in arms again ; 
she hated that he should imagine she had sacrificed her 
fete-day to Leon Ramon, because the artist-trooper was 
dear to him; she hated him to suppose that she had waited 
there all the hours through on the chance that he would 
find her at her post, and admire her for her charity. Cig- 
arette was far too proud and disdainful a young soldier to 
seek either his presence or his praise. 

He smiled again ; he did not understand the caprices of 
her changeful moods, and he did not feel that iuterest in 
her which would have made him divine the threads of their 
vagaries. 

“ I did not think to offend you, my little one,” he said, 
gently. “ I meant only to thank you for your goodness to 
Ramon in my absence.” 

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders. 

11 There was no goodness, and there need be no thanks 
Ask Pere Matou how often I have sat with him hou: 
through.” 

“ But on a fete-day I And you who love pleasure, an . 
grace it so well ” 

“Ouf! I have had so much of it,” said the little one, 
contemptuously. “ It is so tame to me. Clouds of dust, 
scurry of horses, fanfare of trumpets, thunder of drums, 
and all for nothing ! Bah ! I have been in a dozen 
battles — I — and I am not likely to care much for a sham 
fight.” 

“ Hay, she is unjust to herself,” murmured Leon Ramon. 
“ She gave up the fete to do this mercy — it has been a 
great one. She’is more generous than she will ever allow. 
Here, Cigarette, look at these scarlet rosebuds; they are 
like your bright cheeks. Will you have them ? I have 
nothing else to give.” 

“ Rosebuds I” echoed Cigarette, with supreme scorn. 
“ Rosebuds for me ? I know no rose but the red of the 
tricolor ; and I could not tell a weed from a flower. Be- 


880 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


sides, I told Miou-Matou just now, if my children do as 1 
tell them, they will not take a leaf or a peach-stone from 
this grande dame — how does she call herself ? — Madame 
Corona d’Amagiie l” 

Cecil looked up quickly : “ Why not ?” 

Cigarette flashed on him her brilliant brown eyes with a 
fire that amazed him. 

“Because we are soldiers, not paupers I” 

“ Surely ; but ” 

“ And it is not for the silver pheasants, who have done 
nothing to deserve their life but lain in nests of cotton wool, 
and eaten grain that others sow and shell for them, and 
spread their shining plumage in a sun that never clouds 
above their heads, to insult, with the insolence of their 
‘ pity* and their ‘ chari ty,’ the heroes of France, who perish ; 
as they have lived, for their Country and their Flag !” 

It was a superb peroration ! If the hapless flowers lying 
there had been a cartel of outrage to the concrete majesty 
of the French Army, the Army’s champion could not have 
spoken with more impassioned force and scorn. 

Cecil laughed slightly ; but he answered, with a certain 
annoyance : 

“There is no ‘insolence’ here; no question of it. Ma- 
dame la Princesse desired to offer some gift to the soldiers 
of Algiers ; I suggested to her that to increase the scant 
comforts of the hospital, and gladden the weary eyes of 
sick men with beauties that the Executive never dreams of 
bestowing, would be the most merciful and acceptable 
mode of exercising her kindness. If blame there be in 
the matter, it is mine.” 

In defending the generosity of what he knew to be a 
genuine and sincere wish to gratify his comrades, he be- 
trayed what he did not intend to have revealed, namely, 
the conversation that had passed between himself and the 
Spanish Princess. Cigarette caught at the inference with 
the quickness of her lightning-like thought. 

“ Oh-he 1 So it is she /” 

There was a whole world of emphasis, scorn, meaning, 
wrath, comprehension, and irony in the four monosyllables ; 
the dying man looked at her with languid wonder. 

“ She f Who ? What story goes with these roses ?” 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 


381 


“None,” said Cecil, with the same inflection of annoy- 
ance in his voice ; to have his passing encounter with this 
beautiful patrician pass into a barrack canard , through «the 
unsparing jests of the soldiery around him, was a prospect 
very unwelcome to him. “ None whatever. A generous 

thoughtfulness for our common necessities as soldiers ” 

“Ouf!” interrupted Cigarette, before his phrase was 
one-third finished. “ The stalled mare will not go with the 
wild coursers ; an aristocrat may live with us, but he will 
always cling to his old order. This is the story that runs 
with the roses. Miladi was languidly insolent over some 
ivory chessmen, and Corporal Victor thought it divine, 
because languor and insolence are the twin gods of the 
noblesse, parbleu ! Miladi, knowing no gods but those 
two, worships them, and sends to the soldiers of France, as 
the sort of sacrifice her gods love, fruits and wines that, 
day after day, are set on her table, to be touched, if tasted 
at all, with a butterfly’s sip ; and Corporal Victor finds 
this a charity sublime ; — to give what costs nothing, and 
scatter a few crumbs out from the profusion of a life of 
waste and indulgence ! And I say, that if my children 
are of my fashion of thinking, they will choke like dog3 
dying of thirst rather than slake their throats with alms 
cast to them as if they were beggars !” 

With which fiery and bitter enunciation of her views on 
the gifts of the Princess Corona d’Amagiie, Cigarette 
struck light to her brule-gueule, and thrusting it between 
her lips, with her hands in the folds of her scarlet waist- 
sash, went off with the light, swift step natural to her, 
exaggerated into the carriage she had learned of the 
Zouaves, laughing her good-morrows noisily to this and 
that trooper as she passed their couches, and not dropping 
her voice even as she passed the place where the dead lay, 
but singing, as loud as she could, the most impudent drink- 
ing-song out of the taverns of the Spahis that ever cele- 
brated wine, women, and war in the lawlessness of the 
lingua Sabir. 

Her wrath was hot, and her heart heavy within her. 
She had given up her whole fete-day to wait on the anguish 
and to soothe the solitude of his friend lying dying there ; 
and her reward had been to hear him speak of this aristo- 


SS2 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


crat’s donations, that cost her nothing but the trouble of a 
few words of command to her household, as though they 
were the saintly charities of some angel from heaven ! 

“ Diantre !” she muttered, as her hand wandered to the 
ever-beloved forms of the pistols within her sash. “ Chaf- 
faurees or Achmet, or any of them, would throw a draught 
of wine in his face, and lay him dead for me with a pass or 
two ten minutes after. Why don’t I bid them ? I have a 
mind ” 

In that moment she could have shot him dead herself 
without a second’s thought. Storm and sunlight swept, 
one after another, with electrical rapidity at all times 
through her vivid, changeful temper ; and here she had 
been wounded and been stung in the very hour in which 
she had subdued her national love of mirth, and her child- 
like passion for show, and her impatience of all confine- 
ment, and her hatred of all things mournful, to the attain- 
ment of this self-negation 1 Moreover, there mingled with 
it the fierce and intolerant heat of the passionate and 
scarce-conscious jealousy of an utterly untamed nature, and 
of Gallic blood, quick aud hot as the streaming springs of 
the Geyser. 

“You have vexed her, Victor,” said L£on Ramon, as 
she was lost to sight through the doors of the great deso- 
late chamber. 

“ I hope not ; I do not know how/’ answered Cecil. “ It 
is impossible to follow the windings of her wayward ca- 
prices. A child — a soldier — a dancer— a brigand — a spoilt 
beauty — a mischievous gamin — how is one to treat such a 
little fagot of opposites ?” 

The other smiled. 

“ Ah 1 you do not know the Little One yet. She is 
worth a study. I painted her years ago — ‘ La Vivandiere 
a Sept Ans.’ There was not a picture in the Salon that 
winter that was sought like it. I had traveled in Algeria 
then ; I had not entered the army. The first thing I saw 
of Cigarette was this : She was seven years old ; she had 
been beaten black and blue ; she had had two of her tiny teeth 
knocked out. The men were furious, she was a pet with 
them ; and she would not say who had done it, though she 
knew twenty swords would have beaten him flat as a "fritter 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 


383 


if she had given his name. I got her to sit to me some 
days after. I pleased her with her own picture. I asked 
her to tell me why she would not say who had ill treated 
her. She put her head on one side like a robin, and told 
me, in a whisper : * It was one of my comrades — because 
I would not steal for him. I would not have the army 
know — it would demoralize them. If a French soldier 
ever does a cowardly thing, another French soldier must 
not betray it.’ That was Ci-garette — at seven years. The 
esprit du corps was stronger than her own wrongs. What 
do you say to that nature ?” 

“ That it is superb ! — that it might be moulded to any- 
thing. The pity is ” 

“Ah, tais-toi /” said the artist-trooper, half wearily, half 
laughingly. “ Spare me the old world-worn, threadbare, 
formulas. Because the flax and the laleza blossom for use, 
and the garden-flowers grow trained and pruned, must there 
be no bud that opens for mere love of the sun, and Swings 
free in the wind in its fearless fair -fashion ? Believe me, 
dear Victor, it is the lives which follow no previous rule 
that do the most good and give the most harvest.” 

“ Surely. Only for this child — a woman — in her fu- 
ture ” 

“ Her future ? Well, she will die, I dare say, some bright 
day or another, at the head of a regiment, with some des- 
perate battle turned by the valor of her charge, and the 
sight of the torn tricolor upheld in her little hands. That 
is what Cigarette hopes for — why not ? There will always 
be a million of commonplace women ready to keep up the 
decorous traditions of their sex, and sit in safety over their 
needles by the side of their hearths. One little lionuess 
here and there in a generation cannot do overmuch harm.” 

Cecil was silent. He would not cross the words of the 
wounded man by saying what might bring a train of less pleas- 
ant thoughts — saying what, in truth, was in his mind, that 
the future which he had meant for the little Friend of the 
Flag was not that of any glorious death by combat, but that 
of a life (unless no bullet early cut its silver cord in twain) 
when youth should have fled, and have carried forever with 
it her numberless graces, and left in its stead that ribaldry- 
stained, drink-deflled. hardened, battered, joyless, cruel, 


384 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


terrible thing which is unsightly and repugnant to even 
the lowest among men, which is as the lees of the drunk 
wine, as the ashes of the bnrnt-out fires, as the discord of 
the broken and earth-clogged lyre. 

Cigarette was charming now — a fairy-story set into 
living motion — a fantastic little firework out of an extrav- 
aganza, with the impudence of a boy-harlequin and the 
witching kittenhood of a girl’s beauty. But when this 
youth that made it all fair should have passed (and youth 
passes soon when thus adrift on the world), when there 
should be left in its stead only shamelessness, hardihood, 
vice, weariness — those who found the prettiest jest in her 
now would be the first to cast aside, with an oath, the 
charred wrecked rocket-stick of a life from which no golden 
careless stream of many-colored fires of coquette caprices 
would rise and enchant them then. 

“ Who is it that sent these ?” asked Leon Ramon, later 
on, asliis hands still wandered among the flowers : for the 
moment he was at peace ; the ice and the hours of quietude 
had calmed him. 

Cecil told him again. 

“ What does Cigarette know of her?” he pursued. 

“Nothing, except, I believe, she knew that Madame 
Corona accepted my chess-carvings.” 

“Ah ! I thought the Little One was jealous, Victor.” 

“Jealous ? Pshaw ! Of whom ?” 

“Of any one you admire — especially of this grande 
dame. ” 

“ Absurd !” said Cecil, with a sense of annoyance. “ Cig- 
arette is far too bold a little trooper to have any thoughts of 
those follies ; and as for this grande dame , as you call her, 
I shall, in every likelihood, never see her again — unless 
when the word is given to 1 Carry Swords’ or ‘ Lances’ 
at the General’s Salute, where she reins her horse beside 
M. le Marechal’s at a review, as I have done this morning.” 

The keen ear of the sick man caught the inflection of an 
impatience, of a mortification, in the tone that the speaker 

himself was unconscious of. He guessed the truth that 

Cecil had never felt more restless under the shadow of the 
Eagles than he had done when he had carried his sword up 
in the salute as he passed with his regiment the flagstaff 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 385 

where the aristocracy of Algiers had been gathered about 
the Marshal and his staff, and the azure eyes of Madame 
la Princesse had glanced carelessly and critically over the 
long line of gray horses of those Chasseurs d’Afrique 
among whom he rode a bas-officier. 

“ Cigarette is right,” said Ramon, with a slight smile. 
** Your heart is with your old order. You are * aristocrat 
au bout des ongles . 1 ” 

“Indeed I am not, mon ami; I am a mere trooper.” 

“Now I Well, keep your history as you have always 
done, if you will. What my friend was matters nothing ; 
1 know well what he is, and how true a friend. As for 
Miladi, she will be best out of your path, Victor. Women ! 
God ! — they are so fatal 1” 

“ Does notour folly make their fatality ?” 

“Not always; not often. The madness maybe ours, 
but they sow it. Ah ! do they not know how to rouse and 
enrage it ; how to fan, to burn, to lull, to pierce, to slake, 
to inflame, to entice, to sting ? Heavens ! so well they 
know — that their beauty must come, one thinks, out of hell 
itself 1” 

His great eyes gleamed like fire, his hollow chest panted 
for breath, the sweat stood out on his temples. Cecil 
sought to soothe him, but his words rushed on with the 
impetuous course of the passionate memories that arose in 
him. 

“ Do you know what brought me here ? No ! As little 
as I know what brought you, though we have been close 
comrades all these years. Well, it was she! I was an 
artist. I had no money, I had few friends ; but I had 
youth, I bad ambition, I had, I think, genius, till she killed 
it. I loved my art with a great love, and I was happy. 
Even in Paris one can be so happy without wealth, while 
one is young. The mirth of the Barriere — the grotesques 
of the Halles — the wooden booths on New Year’s Day— 
the bright midnight crowds under the gaslights — the bursts 
of music from the gay cafes — the gray little nuns flitting 
through the snow — the Mardi Gras and the Old-World 
fooleries — the summer Sundays under the leaves while we 
laughed like children — the silent dreams through the length 
of the Louvre — dreams that went home with us and made 
Z 33 


386 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


our garret bright with their visions — one was happy in 
them — happy, happy !” 

His eyes were still fastened on the blank white wall 
before him while he spoke, as though the things that his 
words sketched so faintly were painted in all their vivid 
colors on the dull blank surface. And so in truth they 
were, as remembrance pictured all the thousand perished 
hours of his youth. 

“ Happy — until she looked at me,” he pursued, while his 
voice flew in feverish haste over the words. “ Why would 
she not let me be ? She had them all in her golden nets ; 
nobles, and princes, and poets, and soldiers, she swept them 
in far and wide. She had her empire ; why must she seek 
out a man who had but his art and his youth, and steal 
those f Women are so insatiate, look you ; though they 
held all the world, they would not rest if one mote in the 
air swam in sunshine free of them ! It was the first year 
I touched triumph that I saw her. They began for the first 
time to speak of me ; it was the little painting of Cigarette, 
as a child of the army, that did it. Ah, God I I thought 
myself already so famous ! Well, she sent for me to take 
her picture, and I went. I went and I painted her as 
Cleopatra — by her wish. All I it was a face for Cleopa- 
tra — the eyes that burn your youth dead, the lips that kiss 
your honor blind 1 A face — my God ! how beautiful ! She 
had set herself to gain my soul ; and as the picture grew, 
and grew, and grew, so my life grew into hers till I lived 
only by her breath. Why did she want my life ? she had 
so many ! She had rich lives, great lives, grand lives at 
her bidding ; and yet she knew no rest till she had leaned 
down from her cruel height and had seized mine, that had 
nothing on earth but the joys of the sun and the dew, and 
the falling of night, and the dawning of day, that are given 
to the birds of the fields.” 

His chest heaved with the spasms that with each throe 
seemed to tear his frame asunder ; still he conquered them, 
and his words went on, his eyes fastened on the burning 
white glare of the wall as though all the beauty of this 
woman glowed afresh there to his sight. 

“ She was great ; no matter her name, she lives still. 
She was vile ; ay, but not in my sight till too late. Why 


387 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OF FRANCE. 

is it that men never love so well as where they love their 
own ruin ? that the heart which is pure never makes ours 
beat upon it with the rapture sin gives ? Through month 
on month my picture grew, and my passion grew with it, 
fanned by her hand. She knew that never would a man 
paint her beauty like one who gave his soul for the price 
of success. I had my paradise; I was drunk; and I 
paiuted as never the colors of mortals painted a woman. 
I think even she was content; even she, who in her superb 
arrogance thought she was matchless and deathless. Then 
came ray reward ; when the picture was done, her fancy 
had changed 1 A light scorn, a careless laugh, a touch of 
her fan on my cheek ; could I not understand? Was I 
still such a child ? Must I be broken more harshly in to 
learn to give place ? That was all ! and at last her 
lackey pushed me back with his wand from her gates ! 
What would you ? I had not known what a great lady’s 
illicit caprices meant ; I was still but a boy ! She had 
killed me ; she had struck my genius dead ; she had made 
earth my hell — what of that ? She had her beauty eternal 
in the picture she needed, and the whole city rang with her 
loveliness as they looked on my work. I have never painted 
again. I came here. What of that ? An artist the less 
then, the world did not care ; a life the less soon; she will 
not care either 1” 

Then, as the words ended, a great wave of blood beat 
back his breath and burst from the pent-up torture of his 
striving lungs, and stained red the dark and silken masses 
of his beard. His comrade had seen the hemorrhage many 
times, yet now he knew, as he had never known before, that 
this was death. 

As he held him upward in his arms, and shouted loud for 
help, the great luminous eyes of the French soldier looked 
up at him through their mist with the deep, fond gratitude 
that beams in the eyes of a dog as it drops down to die, 
knowing one touch and one voice to the last. 

“ You do not forsake,” he murmured brokenly, while his 
voice ebbed faintly away as the stream of his life flowed 
faster and faster out. “ It is over now, — so best ! If ouly 
I could have seen France once more. France ” 

He stretched his arms outward as he spoke with the vain 


388 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


longing of a hopeless love. Then a deep sigh quivered 
through his lips ; his hand strove to close on the hand of 
his comrade, and his head fell, resting on the flushed bios- 
soms of the rosebuds of Provence. 

He was dead. 

* * * * * * 

An hour later Cecil left the hospital, seeing and hearing 
nothing of the gay riot of the town about him, though 
the folds of many-colored silk and bunting fluttered across 
the narrow Moorish streets, and the whole of the populace 
was swarming through them with the vivacious enjoyment 
of Paris mingling with the stately picturesque life of Arab 
habit and custom. He was well used to pain of every 
sort ; his bread had long been the bread of bitterness, and 
the waters of his draught been of gall. Yet this stroke, 
though looked for, fell heavily and cut far. 

Yonder, in the dead-room, there lay a broken, useless mass 
of flesh and bone that in the sight of the Bureau Arabe was 
only a worn-out machine that had paid its due toll to the 
wars of the Second Empire, and was now valueless ; only fit 
to be cast in to rot, unmourned, in the devouring African 
soil. But to him that lifeless, useless mass was dear still ; 
was the wreck of the bravest, tenderest, and best-beloved 
friend that he had found in his adversity. 

In Leon Ramon he had found a man whom he had loved, 
and who had loved him. They had suffered much, and 
much endured together ; their very dissimilarities had 
seemed to draw them nearer to each other. The gentle 
impassiveness of the Englishman had been like rest to the 
ardent impetuosity of the French soldier ; the passionate 
and poetic temperament of the artist-trooper had revealed 
to Cecil a thousand views of thought and of feeling which 
had never before then dawned on him. And now that the 
one lay dead, a heavy, weary sense of loneliness rested on 
the other. They died around him every day ; the fearless, 
fiery blood of France watered in ceaseless streams the arid, 
harvestless fields of northern Africa ; death was so common, 
that the fall of a comrade was no more noted by them than 
the fall of a loose stone that their horse’s foot shook down 
a precipice. Yet this death was very bitter to him ; he 
wondered with a dull sense of aching impatience why no 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OP FRANCE. 389 

Bedouin bullet, no Arab saber, had ever found his own life 
out, and cut his thralls asunder. 

The evening had just followed on the glow of the day — . 
evening, more lustrous even than ever, for the houses were 
all a-glitter with endless lines of colored lamps and strings 
of sparkliug illuminations, a very sea of brightdaued fire. 
The noise, the mirth, the sudden swell of music, the pleasure- 
seeking crowds, all that were about him, served only to 
make more desolate and more oppressive by their contrast 
his memories of that life, once gracious, and gifted, and 
content with the dower of its youth, ruined by a woman, 
and now slaughtered here, for no avail and with no honor, 
by a lance-thrust in a midnight-skirmish, which had been 
unrecorded even in the few lines of the gazette that chron- 
icled the war-news of Algeria. . 

Passing one of the cafes, a favorite resort of the officers 
of his own regiment, he saw Cigarette. A sheaf of blue, 
and white, and scarlet lights flashed with tongues of golden 
flame over her head, and a great tricolor flag with the 
brass eagle above it, was hanging in the still, hot air from 
the balcony from which she leaned. Her tunic-skirt was 
full of bonbons and crackers that she was flinging down 
among the crowd while she sang, stopping every now and 
then to exchange some passage of gaulois wit with them 
that made her hearers scream with laughter, while behind 
her was a throng of young officers drinking champagne, 
eating ices, and smoking, echoing her songs and her satires 
with enthusiastic voices and stamps of their spurred boot- 
heels. As he glanced upward, she looked literally in a 
blaze of luminance, and the wild, mellow tones of her voice 
ringing out in the “Rien rfest sacre pour un Sapeur,” 
sounded like a mockery of that dying-bed beside which 
they had both so late stood together. 

“ She has the playfulness of the young leopard, and the , 
cruelty,” he thought, with a sense of disgust, forgetting that 
she did not know what he knew, and that if Cigarette had 
waited to laugh until death had passed by she would have 
never laughed all her life through in the battalions of Africa. 

She saw him, as he went beneath her balcony ; and she 
sung all the louder, she flung her sweetmeat missiles with 
the reckless force of a Roman Carnivalist, she launched 
33 * 


390 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


bolts of tenfold more audacious raillery at the delighted 
mob below. Cigarette was “ bon soldat when she was 
wounded, she wound her scarf round the nerve that ached, 
and only laughed the gayer. 

And he did her that injustice which the best among us are 
apt to do to those whom we do not feel interest enough in 
to study with that closeness which can alone give compre- 
hension of the intricate and complex rebus, so faintly 
sketched, so marvelously involved, of human nature. 

He thought her a little leopard, in her vivacious play 
and her inborn blood-thirstiness. 

Well, the little leopard of France played recklessly 
enough that evening. Algiers was en fete, and Cigarette 
was sparkling over the whole of the town like a humming- 
bird or a firefly — here and there, and everywhere, in a thou- 
sand places at once, as it seemed ; staying long with none, 
making music and mirth with all. Waltzing like a thing 
possessed, pelting her lovers with a tempest storm of dra- 
gees, standing on the head of a gigantic Spahi en tableau 
amid a shower of fireworks, improvizing slang songs 
worthy of Jean Vade and his Poissardes, and chorused by 
a hundred lusty lungs that yelled the burden in riotous 
glee as furiously as they were accustomed to shout “En 
avant !” in assault and in charge, Cigarette made amends 
to herself at night for her vain self-sacrifice of the fete-day. 

She had her wound ; yes, it throbbed still now and then, 
and stung like a bee in the warm core of a rose. But she 
was young, she was gay, she was a little philosopher, above 
all she was French, and in the real French blood happiness 
runs so richly that it will hardly be utterly chilled until the 
veins freeze in the coldness of death. She enjoyed — en- 
joyed all the more fiercely, perhaps, because a certain des- 
perate bitterness mingled with the abandonment of her 
Queen Mab-like revelries. Until now Cigarette had been 
as absolutely heedless and without a care as any young 
bird taking its first summer circles downward through the 
intoxication of the sunny air. It was not without fiery 
resistance and scornful revolt that the madcap Figlia del 
Iteggimento would be prevailed on to admit that any 
shadow could have power to rest on her. 

She plaved through more than half the night, the agile 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OP FRANCE.'^ 391 

bounding graceful play of the young leopard to which he 
had likened her, and with a quick punishment from her 
veket-slieathed talons if any durst offend her, Then when 
the dawn was nigh, leopard-like, the Little One sought her 
den. 

She was most commonly under canvas ; but when she 
was in the town it was at one with the proud independence 
of her nature that she rejected all offers made her, and 
would have her own nook to live in, even though she were 
not there one hour out of the twenty-four. 

“ Le Chateau de Cigarette” was a standing jest of the 
Army ; for none was ever allowed to follow her thither, or 
to behold the interior of her fortress, and one overventurous 
Spahi scaling the ramparts had been rewarded with so hot 
a deluge of lentile soup from a boiling casserole poured on 
his head from above, that he had beaten a hasty and igno- 
minious retreat, which was more than a whole tribe of the 
most warlike of his countrymen could ever have made 
him do. 

“ Le Chateau de Cigarette” was neither mor^ nor less 
than a couple of garrets, high in the air, in an old Moorish 
house, in an old Moorish court, decayed, silent, poverty- 
struck, with the wild pumpkin thrusting its leaves through 
the broken fretwork, and the green lizard shooting over the 
broad pavements, once brilliant in mosaic, that the robes of 
the princes of Islam had swept, now carpeted deep with the 
dry white drifted dust, and only crossed by the tottering 
feet of aged Jews or the laden steps of Algerine women. 

Up a long winding rickety stair Cigarette approached her 
castle, which was very near the sky indeed. “ I like the 
blue,” said the chatelaine laconically, “ and the pigeons fly 
close by my window.” And through it, too, she might 
have added, for though no human thing might invade her 
chateau, the pigeons circling in the sunrise light always 
knew well there were rice and crumbs spread for them in 
that eyelet-hole of a casement. 

Cigarette threaded her agile way up the dark ladder-like 
shaft, and opened her door. There was a dim oil wick 
burning ; the garret was large, and as clean as a palace 
could be ; 3s occupants were various, and all sound asleep 
except one, who, rough, and hard, and small, and three- 


392 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


legged, limped up to her and rubbed a little bullet head 
against her lovingly. 

“ Bouffarick — p’tit Bouffarick 1” returned Cigarette, ca- 
ressingly, in a whisper, and Bouffarick, content, limped 
back to a nest of hay, being a little wiry dog that had lost 
a leg in one of the most famous battles of Oran, and lain 
in its dead master’s breast through three days and nights 
on the field. Cigarette, shading the lamp with one hand, 
glanced round on her family. 

They had all histories — histories in the French Army, 
which was the only history she considered of any import 
to the universe. There was a raven perched high, by name 
Vole-qui-Yeut ; he was a noted character among the 
Zouaves, and had made many a campaign riding on his 
owner’s bayonet ; he loved a combat, and was specially 
famed for screaming “ Tue / tue! tue!” all over a battle- 
field ; he was very gray now, and the Zouave’s bone3 had 
long bleached on the edge of the desert. 

There was a tame rat who was a vieille moustache, and 
who had lived many years in a Lignard’s pocket, and 
munched waifs and strays of the military rations, until the 
enormous crime being discovered that it was taught to sit 
up and dress its whiskers to the heinous air of the Marseil- 
laise, the Lingard got the matraque, and the rat was con- 
demned to be killed, had not Cigarette dashed in to the 
rescue and carried the long-tailed revolutionist off in safety. 

There was a big white cat curled in a ball, who had 
been the darling of a Tringlo, and had traveled all over 
North Africa on the top of his mule’s back, seven seasons 
through ; in the eighth the Tringlo was picked off by a 
flying shot, and an Indigene was about to skin the shriek- 
ing Boule Blanche for the soup-pot, when a bullet broke 
his wrist, making him drop the cat with a yell of pain, and 
the Friend of the Flag, catching it up, laughed in his face, 
“ A lead comfit instead of slaughter-soup, my friend 1” 

There was little Bouffarick and three other brother-dog 3 
of equal celebrity, one, in especial, who had been brought 
from Chalons, in defiance of the regulations, inside the 
drum of his regiment, and had been wounded a dozen 
times, always seeking the hottest heat of the skirmish. 
And there was, besides these, sleeping serenely on a straw 


THE LITTLE LEOPARD OP PRANCE. 393 

palliasse, a very old man with a snowy beard and a head fit 
for Gerome to give to an Abraham. 

A very old man — one who had been a conscript in the 
bands of Young France, and marched from his Pyrennean 
village J;o the battle tramp of the Marseillaise, and charged 
with the Enfans de Paris across the plains of Gemappes ; 
who had known the passage of the Alps, and lifted the 
long curls from the dead brow of Desaix, at Marengo, and 
seen in the sultry noonday dust of a glorious summer the 
Guard march into Paris, while the people laughed and 
wept with joy, surging like the mighty sea around one pale 
frail form, so young by years, so absolute by genius. 

A very old man ; long broken with poverty, with pain, 
with bereavement, with extreme old age ; and, by a long 
course of cruel accidents, alone, here in Africa, without 
one left of the friends of his youth, or of the children of 
his name, and deprived even of the charities due from his 
country to his services — alone save for the little Friend of 
the Flag who, for four years, had kept mm on the proceeds 
of her wine trade, in this Moorish attic, tending him her- 
self when in town, taking heed that he should want for 
nothing when she was campaigning. 

“ I will have a care of him,” she had said, curtly, when 
she had found him in great misery and learned his history 
from others ; and she had had the care accordingly, main- 
taining him at her own cost in the Moorish building, and 
paying a good Jewess of the quarter to tend him when she 
was not herself in Algiers. 

The old man was almost dead, mentally, though in bodily 
strength still well able to know the physical comforts of 
food, and rest, and attendance ; he was in his second child- 
hood, in his ninetieth year, and was unconscious of the 
debt he owed her ; even, with a curious caprice of decrep- 
itude, he disliked her, and noticed nothing except the raven 
when it shrieked its “ Tue! tue! tue!” But to Cigarette 
he was as sacred as a god; had he not fought beneath 
the glance, and gazed upon the face, of the First Consul ? 

She bent over him now, saw that he slept, busied herself 
noiselessly in brewing a little tin pot full of coffee and hot 
milk, set it over the lamp to keep it warm, and placed it 
beside him ready for his morning meal, with a roll of white 


394 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


P 

wheat bread ; then, with a glance round to see that hep 
other dependants wanted for nothing, went to her own 
garret adjoining, and with the lattice fastened back, that 
the first rays of sunrise and the first white flash of her 
friends the pigeons’ gleaming wings might awaken her, 
threw herself on her straw and slept with all the graceful 
careless rest of the childhood which though in one sense 
she had never known, yet in another had never forsaken 
her. 

She hid as her lawless courage would not have stooped 
to hide' a sin, had she chosen to commit one, this compas- 
sion which she, the young condottiera of Algeria, showed 
with so tender a charity to the soldier of Bonaparte. To 
him, moreover, her fiery imperious voice was gentle as the 
dove, her wayward dominant will was pliant as the reed, 
her contemptuous skeptic spirit was reverent as a child’s 
before an altar. In her sight the survivor of the Army of 
Italy was sacred ; sacred the eyes which, when full of light, 
had seen the sun gutter on the breastplates of the Hussars 
of Murat, the Dragoons of Kellerman, the Cuirassiers of 
Milhaud ; sacred the hands which, when nervous with 
youth, had borne the standard of the Bepublic victorious 
against the gathered Teuton host in the Thermopylae of 
Champagne; sacred the ears which, when quick to hear, 
had heard the thunder of Areola, of Lodi, of Ilivoli, and, 
above even the tempest of war, the clear still voice of Na- 
poleon ; sacred the lips which, when their beard was dark 
in the fullness of manhood, had quivered, as with a woman’s 
weeping, at the farewell, in the spring night, in the moon- 
lit Cour des Adieux. 

Cigarette had a religion of her own ; and followed it 
more closely than most disciples follow other creeds. 


“miladi aux beaux yeux bleus.” 395 


CHAPTER XXIV. 

“ MILADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 

Early that morning, when the snowy cloud of pigeons 
were circling down to take their daily alms from Cigarette, 
where her bright brown face looked out from the lattice- 
hole, Cecil with some of the rough riders of his regiment 
was sent far into the interior to bring in a string of colts, 
bought of a friendly desert tribe, and destined to be shipped 
to France for the Imperial Haras. The mission took two 
days ; early on the third day they returned with the string 
of wild young horses, whom it had taken not a little exer- 
tion and address to conduct successfully through the coun- 
try into Algiers. 

He was usually kept in incessant activity, because those 
in command over him had quickly discovered the immeas- 
urable value of a bas-officier who was certain to enforce 
and obtain implicit obedience, and certain to execute any 
command given him with perfect address and surety, yet, 
who, at the same time, was adored by his men, and had ac- 
quired a most singularly advantageous influence over them. 
But of this he was always glad : throughout his twelve 
years’ service under the Emperor’s flag, he had only found 
those moments in which he was unemployed intolerable ; he 
would willingly have been in the saddle from dawn till 
midnight. 

Chateauroy was himself present when the colts were 
taken into the stable-yard ; and himself inquired, without 
the medium of any third person, the whole details of the 
sale and of the transit. It was impossible, with all his 
inclination, to find any fault either with the execution of 
the errand or with the brief respectful answers by which 
his corporal replied to his rapid and imperious cross-ques- 
tionings. There were a great number of men within hear- 
ing, many of them the most daring and rebellious pratiques 


396 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


of the regiment ; and Cecil would have let the coarsest 
upbraidings scourge him, rather than put the temptation to 
mutiny in their way which one insubordinate or even not 
strictly deferential word from him would have given. Hence 
the inspection passed off peaceably ; as the Marquis turned 
on his heel, however, he paused a moment. 

“ Victor 1” 

“ Mon Commandant ?” 

“ I have not forgotten your insolence with those ivory 
toys. But Madame la Princesse herself has deigned to 
solicit that it shall be passed over unpunished. She cannot, 
of course, yield to your impertinent request to remain also 
unpaid for them. I charged myself with the fulfillment of 
her wishes. You deserve the matraque , but since Miladi 
herself is lenient enough to pardon you, you are to take 
this instead. Hold your hand, sir I” 

Cecil put out his hand ; he expected to receive a heavy 
blow from his commander’s saber, that possibly might 
break the wrist. These little trifles were common in 
Africa. 

Instead, a rouleau of Napoleons was laid on his open 
palm. Ch&teauroy knew the gold would sting more than 
the blow. 

For the moment Cecil had but one impulse — to dash the 
pieces in the giver’s face. In time to restrain the impulse, 
he caught sight of the wild eager hatred gleaming in the 
eyes of Rake, of Petit Picpon, of a score of others who 
loved him and cursed their Colonel, and would at one signal 
from him have sheathed their swords in the mighty frame 
of the Marquis, though they should have been fired down 
the next moment themselves for the murder. The warning 
of Cigarette came to his memory ; his hand clasped on the 
gold ; he gave the salute calmly as Chateauroy swung him- 
self away. 

The troops looked at him with longing questioning 
eyes ; they knew enough of him by now to know the bit- 
terness such gold, so given, had for him. Any other, even 
a corporal, would have been challenged with a storm of 
raillery, a volley of congratulation, and would have had 
shouted or hissed after him opprobrious accusations of 
“ faisant suisse ” if he had not forthwith treated his com- 


“ MIL ADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 397 

lades royally from such largesse. With Bel-a-faire-peur 
they held their peace, they kept the silence which they saw 
that he wished to keep, as, his hour of liberty being come, 
he went slowly out of the great court with the handful of 
Napoleons thrust in the folds of his sash. 

Rather unconsciously than by premeditation his steps 
turned through the streets that led to his old familiar 
haunt, the As de Pique, and dropping down on a bench 
under the awning, he asked for a draught of water. It 
was brought him at once, the hostess, a quick brown little 
woman from Paris, whom the lovers of Eugene Sue called 
Rigolette, adding of her own accord a lump of ice and a 
slice or two of lemon, for which she vivaciously refused 
payment, though generosity was by no means her cardinal 
virtue. 

“ Bel-a-faire-peur” awakened general interest through 
Algiers ; he brought so fiery and so daring a reputation 
with him from the wars and raids of the interior, yet he 
was so calm, so grave, so gentle, so listless ; it was known 
that he had made himself the terror of Kabyle and Bedouin, 
yet here in the city he thanked the negro boy who took 
him a glass of lemonade at an estaminet, and sharply re- 
buked one of his men for knocking down an old colon with 
a burden of gourds and of melons ; such a Roumi as this 
the good people of the Franco- African capital held as a 
perfect gift of the gods, and not understanding one whit, 
nevertheless fully appreciated. 

He did not look at the newspapers she offered him ; but 
sat gazing out from the tawny awning, like the sail of a 
Neapolitan felucca, down the checkered shadows and the 
many-colored masses of the little crooked, rambling, semi- 
barbaric alley. He was thinking of the Napoleons in his 
sash and of the promise he had pledged to Cigarette. 
That he would keep it he was resolved. The few impres- 
sive vivid words of the young vivandibre had painted be- 
fore him like a picture the horrors of mutiny and its hope- 
lessness ; rather than that, through him, these should befall 
the men who had become his brethren-in-arms, he felt ready 
to let the Black Hawk do his worst on his own life. Yet 
a weariness, a bitterness, he had never known in the fixcite- 

34 


393 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ment of active service came on him, brought by this sting 
of insult brought from the fair hand of an aristocratc. 

There was absolutely no hope possible in his future. 
The uttermost that could ever come to him would be a 
grade something higher in the army that now enrolled him ; 
the gift of the cross, or a post in the bureau. Algerine 
warfare was not like the campaigns of the armies of Italy 
or the Rhine, and there was no Napoleon here to discern 
with unerring omniscience a leader’s genius under the kepi 
of a common trooper. Though he should show the qual- 
ities of a Massena or a Kleber, the chances were a million 
to one that he would never get even so much as a lieuten- 
ancy ; and the raids on the decimated tribes, the obscure 
skirmishes of the interior, though terrible in slaughter and 
venturesome enough, were not the fields on which great 
military successes were won and great military honors ac- 
quired. The French fought for a barren strip of brown 
plateau that, gained, would be of little use or profit to 
them ; he thought that he did much the same, that his 
future was much like those arid sand-plains, those thirsty 
verdureless stretches of burnt earth — very little worth the 
reaching. 

The heavy folds of a Bedouin’s haick, brushing the 
papers off the bench, broke the thread of his musings. As 
he stooped for them, he saw that one was an English jour- 
nal some weeks old. His own name caught his eye — the 
name buried so utterly, whose utterance in the Sheik’s tent 
had struck him like a dagger’s thrust. The flickering light 
and darkness, as the awning waved to and fro, made the 
lines move dizzily upward and downward as he read — 
read the short paragraph touching the fortunes of the race 
that had disowned him : 

s 

“ The Royallieu Succession. — We regret to learn that 
the Right Hon. Viscount Royallieu, who so lately suc- 
ceeded to the family title on his father’s death, has expired 
at Mentone, whither his health had induced him to go 
some months previous. The late Lord was unmarried. 
His next brother was, it will be remembered, many years 
ago, killed on a southern railway. The title, therefore, 
now falls to the third and only remaining son, the Hon. 


,f MIL ADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 


399 


Berkeley Cecil, who, having lately inherited considerable 
properties from a distant relative, will, we believe, revive 
all the old glories of this Peerage, which have, from a va- 
riety of causes, lost somewhat of their ancient brilliancy . 79 

Cecil sat quite still, as he had sat looking down on the 
record of his father’s death, when Cigarette had rallied 
him with her gay challenge among the Moresco ruins. His 
face (lushed hotly under the warm golden hue of the desert 
bronze, then lost all its color as suddenly, till it was as pale 
as any of the ivory he carved. The letters of the paper 
reeled and wavered, and grew misty before his eyes ; he 
lost all sense of the noisy changing polyglot crowd throng- 
ing past him ; he, a common soldier in the Algerian Cav- 
alry, knew that, by every law of birthright, he was now a 
Peer of England. 

His first thought was for the dead man. True, there 
had been little amity, little intimacy, between them ; a neg- 
ligent friendliness whenever they had met had been all that 
they had ever reached. But in their childhood they had 
been carelessly kind to one another, and the memory of the 
boy who had once played beside him down the old galleries 
and under the old forests, of the man who had now died 
yonder where the southern sea-board lay across the warm 
blue Mediterranean, was alone on him for the moment. 
His thoughts had gone back, with a pang, almost ere he 
had read the opening lines, to autumn mornings in his 
youngest years when the leaves had been flushed with their 
earliest red, and the brown still pools had been alive with 
water-birds, aud the dogs had dropped down charging 
among the flags and rushes, and his brother’s boyish face 
had laughed on him from the wilderness of willows, and his 
brother’s boyish hands had taught him to handle his first 
cartridge, and to fire his first shot. The many years of 
indifference and estrangement were forgotten, the few years 
of childhood’s confidence and comradeship alone remem- 
bered, as he saw the words that brought him in his exile 
the story of his brethren’s fate and of his race’s fortunes. 
His head sank, his face was still colorless, he sat motion- 
less with the printed sheet iu his hand. Once his eyes 
flashed, his breath came fast and uneven ; he rose with a 


400 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


sudden impulse, with a proud bold instinct of birth and 
freedom. Let him stand here in what grade he wpuld, 
with the badge of a Corporal of the Army of Africa on 
his arm, this inheritance that had come to him was his ; he 
bore the name and the title of his house as surely as any 
had ever borne it since the first of the Norman owners of 
Iloyallieu had followed the Bastard’s banner. 

The vagabond throngs, Moorish, Frank, Negro, Colan, 
paused as they pushed their way over the uneven road, and 
stared at him vacantly where he stood. There was some- 
thing in his attitude, in his look, which swept over them 
seeing none of them, in the eager lifting of his head, in the 
excited fire in his eyes, that arrested all, from the dullest 
muleteer plodding on with his string of patient beasts, to 
the most volatile French girl laughing on her way with a 
group of fantassins. He did not note them, hear them, 
think of them ; the whole of the Algerine scene had faded 
out as if it had no place before him ; he had forgot that he 
was a cavalry soldier of the Empire ; he saw nothing but 
the green wealth of the old home woods far away in Eng- 
land ; he remembered nothing save that he, and he alone, 
was the rightful Lord of Royallieu. 

‘ Tiens , es tu fou, mon brave ? Bois de m’avoine* 
Bel-d-faire-peur /” 

The coarse good-humored challenge, as the hand of a 
broad-chested, black-visaged veteran of Chasseurs fell on 
his shoulder, and the wooden rim of a little wine-cup was 
thrust toward him with the proffered drink, startled him 
and recalled him to the consciousness of where he was. He 
stared one moment absently in the trooper’s amazed face, 
and then shook him off with a suddenness that tossed back 
the cup to the ground, and holding the journal clinched 
close in his hand, went swiftly through the masses of the 
people out and away, he little noted where, till he had 
forced his road beyond the gates, beyond the town, beyond 
all reach of its dust and its babble and its discord, and was 
alone in the farther outskirts, where to the north the calm 
sunlit bay slept peacefully with a few scattered ships riding 
at anchor, and southward the luxuriance of the Sahel 


* Brandy. 


“MILADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS n 401 

stretched to meet the wide and cheerless plateaus, dotted 
with the couical houses of hair, and desolate as though 
the lo'cust-swarm had just alighted there to lay them waste. 

Reaching the heights he stood still involuntarily, and 
looked down once more on the words that told him of his 
birthright ; in the blinding intense light of the African day 
they seemed to stand out as though carved in stone, and as 
he read them once more a great darkness passed over his 
face ; — this heritage was his, and he could never take it 
up ; this thing had come to him, and he must never claim 
it. He was Viscount Royallieu as surely as any of his 
fathers had been so before him, and he was dead forever 
in the world’s belief; he must live, and grow old, and perish 
by shot or steel, by sickness or by age, with his name and 
his rights buried, and his years passed as a private soldier 
of France. 

The momentary glow which had come to him with the 
sudden resurrection of hope and of pride faded utterly as 
he slowly read and re-read the lines of the journal on the 
broken terraces of the hill-side, where the great fig-trees 
spread their fantastic shadows, and through a rocky chan- 
nel a russet stream of shallow waters threaded its down- 
ward path under the reeds, and no living thing was near 
him save some quiet browsing herds far off, and their Arab 
shepherd-lad that an artist might have sketched as Ishmael. 
What his future might have been rose before his thoughts ; 
what it must be rose also, bitterly, blackly, drearily, in 
contrast. A noble without even a name ; a chief of his 
race without even the power to claim kinship with that 
race ; owner by law of three thousand broad English acres, 
yet an exile without freedom to set foot on his native land ; 
by heritage one among the aristocracy of England, by 
circumstances, now and forever, till an Arab bullet should 
cut in twain his thread of life, a soldier of the African le- 
gions, bound to obey the commonest and coarsest boor that 
had risen to a rank above him : this was what he knew 
himself to be, and knew that he must continue to be with- 
out one appeal against it, without once stretching out his 
hand toward his right of birth and station. 

There was a passionate revolt, a bitter heart-sickness on 
him ; all the old freedom and peace and luxury and pleas- 
2 A 34* 


402 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


tire of the life he had left so long allured him with a ter- 
rible temptation ; the honors of the rank that he should 
now have filled were not what he remembered ; what he 
longed for with an agonized desire was to stand once more 
stainless among his equals, to reach once more the liberty 
of unchallenged unfettered life, to return once more to 
those who held him but as a dishonored memory, as one 
whom violent death had well snatched from the shame of a 
criminal career. 

“ But who would believe me now ?” he thought. “ Be- 
sides, this makes no difference. If three words spoken 
would reinstate me, I could not speak them at that cost. 
The beginning perhaps was folly, but for sheer justice sake 
there is no drawing back now. Let him enjoy it ; God 
knows I do not grudge him it.” 

Yet though it was true to the very core that no envy and 
no evil lay in his heart against the younger brother to 
whose lot had fallen all good gifts of men and fate, there 
was almost unbearable anguish on him in this hour in which 
he learned the inheritance that had come to him, and re- 
membered that he could never take again even so much of 
it as lay in the name of his fathers. When he had given 
his memory up to slander and oblivion, and the shadow of 
a great shame, when he had let his life die out from the 
world that had known him, and buried it beneath the rough, 
weather-stained, blood-soaked cloth of a private soldier’s 
uniform, he had not counted the cost then, nor foreseen the 
cost hereafter. It had fallen on him very heavily now. 

Where he stood under some sheltered columns of a long- 
ruined mosque whose shafts were bound together by a 
thousand withes and wreaths of the rich fantastic Sahel 
foliage, an exceeding weariness of longing was upon him 
— longing for all that he had forfeited, for all that was his 
own, yet never could be claimed as his. 

The day was intensely still ; there was not a sound except 
when here and there the movement of a lizard under the 
dry grasses gave a low crackling rustle. He wondered 
almost which was the dream and which the truth ; that old 
life that he had once led, and that looked now so far away 
and so unreal, or this which had been about him for so 
many years in the camps and the bivouacs, the barracks 


“MIL ADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 


403 


and the battle-fields. He wondered almost which he him- 
self was — an English Peer on whom the title of his line 
had fallen, or a Corporal of Chasseurs who must take his 
chiefs insults as patiently as a cur takes the blows of its 
master ; that he was both seemed to him as he stood there 
with the glisten of the sea before and the swelling slopes 
of the hillside above, a vague distorted nightmare. 

Hours might have passed, or only moments, he could 
not have told ; his eyes looked blankly out at the sun-glow, 
his hand instinctively clinched on the journal whose stray 
lines had told him in an Algerine trattoria that he had in- 
herited what he never could enjoy. 

“ Are they content, I wonder ?” he thought, gazing down 
that fiery blaze of shadowless light, “do they ever re- 
member ?” 

He thought of those for whose sakes he had become 
what he was. 

The distant mellow ringing notes of a trumpet-call floated 
to his ear from the town at his feet; it was sounding the 
rentree en caserne .” Old instinct, long habit, made him 
start and shake his harness together and listen. The 
trumpet-blast winding cheerily from afar off recalled him 
to the truth, summoned him sharply back from vain regrets 
to the facts of daily life. It woke him as it wakes a 
sleeping charger ; it roused him as it rouses a wounded 
trooper. 

He stood hearkening to the familiar music till it had 
died away, spirited, yet still lingering ; full of fire, yet fad- 
ing softly down the wind. He listened till the last echo 
ceased ; then he tore the paper that he held in strips, and 
let it float away, drifting down the yellow current of the 
reedy river-channel ; and he half drew from its scabbard 
the saber whose blade had been notched and dinted and 
stained in many midnight skirmishes and many headlong 
charges under the desert suns, and looked at it as though a 
friend’s eye gazed at him in the gleam of the trusty steel. 
A nd his soldier-like philosophy, his campaigner’s careless- 
ness, his habitual easy negligence that had sometimes been 
weak as water and sometimes heroic as martyrdom, came 
back to him with a deeper shadow on it, that was grave 
with a calm, resolute, silent courage. 


404 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ So best after all, perhaps,” he said half aloud iu the 
Bolitude of the ruined and abandoned mosque. “ He can- 
not well come to shipwreck with such a fair wind and such 
a smooth sea. And I — I am just as well here. To ride 
with the Chasseurs is more exciting than to ride with the 
Pytchley ; and the rules of the Ckambree are scarce more 
tedious than the rules of a Court. Nature turned me out 
for a soldier, though Fashion spoiled me for one. I can 
make a good campaigner — I should never make anything 
else.” . 

And he let his sword drop back again into the scabbard, 
and quarreled no more with fate. 

His hand touched the thirty gold pieces in his sash. 

He started, as the recollection of the forgotten insult 
came back on him. He stood awhile in thought ; then he 
took his resolve. 

A half hour of quick movement, for he had become used 
to the heat as an Arab, and heeded it as little, brought him 
before the entrance-gates of the Villa A’ioussa. A native 
of Soudan, iu a rich dress, who had the office of porter, 
asked him politely his errand. Every indigene learns by 
hard experience to be courteous to a French soldier. Cecil 
simply asked, in answer, if Madame la Princesse were vis- 
ible. The negro returned, cautiously, that she was at 
home, but doubted her being accessible. “ You come 
from M. le Marquis ?” he inquired. 

“ No ; on my own errand.” 

“ You 1” Not all the native African awe of a Roumi 
could restrain the contemptuous amaze in the word. 

“ I. Ask if Corporal Victor, of the Chasseurs, can be 
permitted a moment’s interview with your mistress. I 
come by permission,” he added, as the native hesitated 
between his fear of a Roumi and his sense of the appalling 
unfittingness of a private soldier seeking audience of a 
Spauish princess. The message was passed about between 
several of the household ; at last a servant of higher au- 
thority appeared : 

“ Madame permitted Corporal Victor to be taken to her 
presence. Would he follow ?” 

lie uncovered his head and entered, passing through 
several passages and chambers, richly hung and furnished; 


“MIL ADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 405 

for the villa had been the “campagne” of an illustrious 
French personage, who had offered it to the Princess Co- 
rona when, for some slight delicacy of health, the air of 
Algeria was advocated. A singular sensation came on 
him, half of familiarity, half of strangeness, as he advanced 
along them ; for twelve years he had seen nothing but the 
bare walls of barrack-rooms, the goat-skin of douars, and 
the canvas of his own camp-tent. To come once more, 
after so long an interval, amid the old things of luxury 
and grace that had been so long unseen wrought curiously 
on him. He could not fairly disentangle past and present. 
For the moment, as his feet fell once more on soft carpets, 
and his eyes glanced over gold and silver, malachite and 
bronze, white silk and violet damasks, he almost thought 
the Algerian years were a disordered dream of the night. 

His spur caught in the yielding carpet, and his saber 
clashed slightly against it ; as the renlree au caserne had 
done an hour before, the sound recalled the actual present 
to him. He was but a French soldier, who went on suffer- 
ance into the presence of a great lady. All the rest was 
dead and buried. 

Some half dozen apartments, large and small, were 
crossed ; then into that presence he was ushered. The 
room was deeply shaded, and fragrant with the odors of 
the innumerable flowers of the Sahel soil ; there was that 
about it which struck on him as some air, long unheard 
but once intimately familiar, on the ear will revive innumer- 
able memories; like the “ vieil air languissant et funebre,” 
for which Gerard de Nerval was willing to give “ all Ros- 
sini and Weber.” She was at some distance from him, 
with the trailing draperies of eastern fabrics falling about 
her in a rich, unbroken, shadowy cloud of meltiug color, 
through which, here and there, broke threads of gold ; in- 
voluntarily he paused on the threshold looking at her. 
Some faint, far-off remembrance stirred in him, but deep 
down in the closed grave of his past ; some vague intan- 
gible association of forgotten days, forgotten thoughts, 
drifted before him as it had drifted before him when first 
in the Chambree of his barracks he had beheld the Venetia 
Corona. 

She moved forward as her servant announced him ; she 


406 


UNDER TWO ELAGS. 


saw him pause there like one spell-bound, and thought it 
the hesitation of one who felt sensitively his own low grade 
in life. She came toward him with the silent sweeping 
grace that gave her the carriage of an empress ; her voice 
fell on his ear with the accent of a woman immeasurably 
proud, but too proud not to bend softly and graciously to 
those who were so far beneath her that without such aid 
from her they could never have addressed or have ap- 
proached her. 

“ You have come, I trust, to withdraw your prohibition ? 
Nothing will give me greater pleasure than to bring his 
Majesty’s notice to one of the best soldiers his Army 
holds.” 

There was that in the words, gently as they were spoken, 
that recalled him suddenly to himself ; they had that negli- 
gent, courteous pity she would have shown to some colon 
begging at her gates ! He forgot — forgot utterly — that 
he was only an African trooper. He only remembered 
that he had once been a gentleman, that — if a life of honor 
and of self-negation can make any so — he was one still. He 
advanced and bowed with the old serene elegance that h5s 
bow had once been famed for ; and she, well used to be 
even overcritical in such trifles, thought, “ That man has 
once lived in courts 1” 

“ Pardon me, madame, I do not come to trespass so far 
upon your benignity,” he answered, as he bent before her. 
“ I come to express, rather, my regret that you should have 
made one single error.” 

“ Error !” — a haughty surprise glanced from her eyes as 
they swept over him. Such a word had never been used 
to her in the whole course of her brilliant and pampered 
life of sovereignty and indulgence. 

“ One common enough, madame, in your Order. The 
error to suppose that under the rough cloth of a private 
trooper’s uniform there cannot possibly be such aristocratic 
monopolies as nerves to wound.” 

“I do not comprehend you.” She spoke very coldlj ; 
she repented her profoundly of her concession in admitting 
a Chasseur d’Afrique to her presence. 

“ Possibly not. Mine was the folly to dream that you 
would ever do so. I should not have intruded on you now, 


“MILADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 


40T 


but for this reason : the humiliation you were pleased to 
pass on me I could neither refuse nor resent to the dealer 
of it. Had I done so, men who are only too loyal to me 
would have resented with me, and been thrashed or been 
shot, as payment. I was compelled to accept it, and to 
wait until I could return your gift to you. I have no 
right to complain that you pained me with it, since one 
who occupies my position ought, I presume, to consider 
remembrance, even by an outrage, an honor done to him 
by the Princess Corona.” 

As he said the last words he laid on a table that stood 
near him the gold of Chateauroy’s insult. She had listened 
with a bewildered wonder, held in check by the haughtier 
impulse of offense, that a man in this grade could venture 
thus to address, thus to arraign her. His words were to- 
tally incomprehensible to her, though, by the grave rebuke 
of his manner, she saw that they were fully meant, and, as 
he considered, fully authorized by some wrong done to him. 
As he laid the gold pieces down upon her table, an idea 
of the truth came to her. 

“I know nothing of what you complain of; I sent you 
no money. What is it you would imply ?” she asked him, 
looking up from where she leaned back in the low couch 
into whose depth she had sunk as he had spoken. 

“ You did not send me these ? Not as payment for the 
chess service ?” 

“ Assuredly not. After what you said the other day, I 
should have scarcely been so ill-bred and so heedless of 
inflicting pain. Who used my name thus ?” 

His face lightened with a pleasure and a relief that 
changed it wonderfully ; that brighter look of gladness had 
been a stranger to it for so many years. 

“ You give me infinite happiness, madame. You little 
dream how bitter such slights are where one has lost the 
power to resent them 1 It was M. de Chateauroy, who this 
morning ” 

“ Dared to tell you I sent you those coins ?” 

The serenity of a courtly woman of the world was uu- 
broken, but her blue and brilliant eyes darkened and 
gleamed beneath the sweep of their lashes. 

“ Perhaps I can scarcely say so much. He gave them. 


403 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and he implied that he gave them from you. The words 
he spoke were these. ” 

He told her them as they had been uttered, adding no 
more ; she saw the construction they had been intended to 
bear, and that which they had borne naturally to his ear ; 
she listened earnestly to the end. Then she turned to him 
with the exquisite softness of grace which, when she was 
moved to it, contrasted so vividly with the haughty and 
almost chill languor of her habitual manner. 

“ Believe me, I regret deeply that you should have been 
wounded by this most coarse indignity ; I grieve sincerely 
that through myself in any way it should have been brought 
upon you. As for the perpetrator of it, M. de Ch&teau- 
roy will be received here no more ; and it shall be my care 
that he learns not only how I resent his unpardonable use 
of my name, but how I esteem his cruel outrage to a de- 
fender of his own Flag. You did exceedingly well and 
wisely to acquaint me ; in your treatment of it as an af- 
front that I was without warrant to offer you, you showed 
the just indignation of a soldier, and — of what I am very 
sure that you are — a gentleman.” 

He bowed low before her. 

“ Madame, you have made me the debtor of my enemy’s 
outrage. Those words from you are more than sufficient 
compensation for it.” 

“ A poor one, I fear 1 Your Colonel is your enemy, 
then ? And wherefore ?” 

He paused a moment : 

“ Why at first I scarcely know. We are antagonistic,,! 
suppose.” 

“But is it usual for officers of his high grade to show 
such malice to their soldiers ?” 

“ Most unusual. In this service especially so ; although 
officers rising from the ranks themselves are more apt to 
contract prejudices and ill feeling against, as they are to 
feel favoritism to, their men, than where they enter the 
regiment in a superior grade at once. At least, that is 
the opinion I myself have formed, studying the working of 
the different systems.” 

“ You know the English service, then?” 

“I know something of it.” 


j 


MILADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 


409 


u 


" And still, though thinking this, you prefer the French ?” 

“ I distinctly prefer it, as one that knows how to make 
fine soldiers, and how to reward them ; as one in which a 
brave man will be valued, and a worn-out veteran will not 
be left to die like a horse at a knacker’s. ” 

“A brave man valued, and yet you are a corporal?” 
thought Miladi, as he pursued : 

“ Since I am here, madamfc, let me thank you, in the 
Army’s name, for your infinite goodness in acting so mu- 
nificently on my slight hint. Your generosity has made 
many happy hearts in the hospital.” 

“ Generosity ! Oh, do not call it by any such name I 
What did it cost me ? We are terribly selfish here. I am 
indebted to you that for once you made me remember 
those who suffered.” 

She spoke with a certain impulse of candor and of self- 
accusation that broke with great sweetness the somewhat 
careless coldnesss of her general manner; it was like a 
gleam of light that showed all the depth and the warmth 
that in truth lay beneath that imperious languor of habit. 
It broke further the ice of distance that severed the grande 
dame from the cavalry soldier. 

Insensibly to himself, the knowledge that he had, in fact, 
the right to stand before her as an equal gave him the 
bearing of one who exercised that right, and her rapid 
perception had felt before now that this Roumi of Africa 
was as true a gentleman as any that had ever thronged 
about her in palaces. Her own life had been an uninter- 
rupted course of luxury, prosperity, serenity, and power : 
the adversity which she could not but perceive had weighed 
on his had a strange interest to her. She had heard of 
many calamities, and aided many ; but they had always 
been far sundered from her, they had never touched her : 
in this man’s presence they seemed to grow very close, ter- 
ribly real. She led him on to speak of his comrades, of his 
daily life, of his harassing routine of duties in peace, and 
of his various experiences in war. He told her, too, of 
Leon Hamon’s history ; and as she listened, he saw a mist 
arise and dim the brilliancy of those eyes that men com- 
plained would never soften. The very fidelity with which 
he sketched to her the bitter sufferings and the rough no- 

35 


410 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


bility that were momentarily borne and seen in that great 
military family of which he had become a son by adoption, 
interested her by its very unlikeness to anything in her own 
world. 

His voice had still its old sweetness, his manner still its 
old grace ; and added to these were a grave earnestness 
and a natural eloquence that the darkness of his own for- 
tunes and the sympathies with others that pain had awak- 
ened had brought to him. He wholly forgot their respec- 
tive station ; he only remembered that for the first time for 
so many years he had the charm of converse with a woman 
of high breeding, of inexpressible beauty, and of keen and 
delicate intuition. He wholly forgot how time passed, and 
she did not seek to remind him ; indeed, she but little noted 
it herself. 

At last the conversation turned back to his Chief. 

“ You seem to be aware of some motive for your com- 
mandant’s dislike ?” she asked him. “ Tell me to what you 
attribute it ?” 

“It is a long tale, raadame.” 

“ No matter, I would hear it.” 

“ I fear it would only weary you ?” 

“ Do not fear that. Tell it me ?” 

He obeyed, and told to her the story of the Emir and of 
the Pearl of the Desert; and Yenetia Corona listened, as 
she had listened to him throughout, with an interest that 
she rarely vouchsafed to the recitals and the witticisms of 
her own circle. He gave to the narrative a soldierly sim- 
plicity, and a picturesque coloring that lent a new interest 
to her ; and she was of that nature which, however it may 
be led to conceal feeling from pride and from hatred, never 
fails to awaken to indignant sympathy at wrong. 

“This barbarian is your chief?” she said, as the tale 
closed. “ His enmity is your honor I l can well credit 
that he will never pardon your having stood between him 
and his crime.” 

“ He has never pardoned it yet, of a surety.” 

“I will not tell you it was a noble action,” she said, 
with a smile sweet as the morning, a smile that few saw 
light on them. “ It came too naturally to a man of honor 
for you to care for the epithet Yet it was a great one, a 


“MIL ADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 411 

most generous one. But I have not heard one thing; 

what argument did you use to obtain her release ?” 

“No one has ever heard it,” he answered her, while his 
voice sank low. “ I will trust you with it ; it will not pass 
elsewhere. I told him enough of — ef my own past life to 
show him that I knew what his had been, and that I knew 
moreover, though they were dead to me now, men in that 
greater world of Europe who would believe my statement 
if I wrote them this outrage on the Emir, and would 
avenge it for the reputation of the Empire. And unless 
he released the Emir’s wife, I swore to him that I would so 
write, though he had me shot on the morrow ; and he 
knew I should keep my word.” 

She was silent some moments, looking on him with a 
musing gaze, in which some pity and more honor for him 
were blended. 

“You told him your past. Will you confess it to me ?” 

“I cannot, raadame.” 

“ And why ?” 

“ Because I am dead ! Because, in your presence, it 
becomes more bitter to me to remember that I ever lived.” 

“ You speak strangely. Cannot your life have a resur- 
rection ?” 

“ Never, madame. For a brief hour you have given it 
one — in dreams. It will have no other.” 

“ But surely there may be ways, — such a story as you 
have told me brought to the Emperor’s knowledge, you 
would see your enemy disgraced, yourself honored ?” 

“ Possibly, madame. But it is out of the question that 
it should ever be so brought. As I am now, so I desire to 
live and die.” 

“ You voluntarily condemn yourself to this ?” 

“ I have voluntarily chosen it. I am well sure that the 
silence I entreat will be kept by you ?” 

“ Assuredly ; unless by your wish it be broken. Yet, — 
I await my brother’s arrival here ; he is a soldier himself, 

I shall hope that he will persuade you to think differently 
of your future. At any rate, both his and my own influ- 
ence will always |?e exerted for ycu, if you will avail your- 
self of it.” 

11 You do me much honor, madame. All I will ever ask 


412 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


of you is to return those coins to ray Colonel, and to forget 
that your gentleness has made me forget, for one merciful 
half hour, the sufferance on which alone a trooper can pre- 
sent himself here.” 

He swept the grourfd with his kepi as though it were the 
plumed hat of a Marshal, and backed slowly from her pres- 
ence, as he had many a time long before backed out of a 
throne-room. 

As he went, his eyes caught the armies of the ivory 
chessmen ; they stood under glass, and had not been broken 
by her lapdog. 

Miladi, left alone there in her luxurious morning-room, 
sat awhile lost in thought. He attracted her ; he interested 
her; he aroused her sympathy and her wonder as the men 
of her own world had failed to do — aroused them despite 
the pride which made her impatient of lending so much 
attention to a mere Chasseur d’Afrique. His knowledge 
of the fact that he was in reality the representative of his 
race, although the power to declare himself so had been 
forever abandoned and lost, had given him in her presence 
that day a certain melancholy, and a certain grave dignity 
that would have shown a far more superficial observer 
than she was that he had come of a great race, and had 
memories that were of a very different hue to the coarse 
and hard life which he led now. She had seen much of the 
world, and was naturally far more penetrative and more 
correct in judgment than are most women. She discovered 
the ring of true gold in his words, and the carriage of pure 
breeding in his actions. He interested her ; — more than it 
pleased her that he should. A man so utterly beneath 
her ! — doubtless brought into the grade to which he had 
fallen by every kind of error, of improvidence, of folly, of 
probably worse than folly 1 

It was too absurd that she, so difficult to interest, so in- 
accessible, so fastidious, so satiated with all that was bril- 
liant and celebrated, should find herself seriously spending 
her thoughts, her pity, and her speculation on an adven- 
turer of the African Army ! She laughed a little at her- 
self as she stretched out her hand for a new volume of 
French poems dedicated to her by their accomplished 
writer, who was a Parisian diplomatist. 


“MILADI AUX BEAUX YEUX BLEUS.” 413 

“ One would imagine I was just out of a convent, and 
weaving a marvelous romance from a mystery and a tris - 
tesse, because the first soldier I notice in Algeria lias a 
gentleman’s voice and is ill treated by his officers !” she 
thought with a smile, while she opened the poems which 
had that day arrived, radiant in the creamy vellum, the 
white velvet, and the gold of a dedication copy, with the 
coronet of the Corona d’Amague on theip binding. The 
poems were sparkling with all the grace of airy vers de 
societe and elegant silvery harmonies ; but they served ill 
to chain her attention, for while she read her eyes wan- 
dered at intervals to the chess battalions. 

“ Such a man as that buried in the ranks of this brutal- 
ized army I” she mused. “What fatal chance could bring 
him here ? Misfortune, not misconduct, surely. I wonder 
if Lyon could learn ? He shall try.” 

“ Your Chasseur has the air of a Prince, my love,” said 
a voice behind her. 

“ Equivocal compliment ! A much better air than most 
Princes,” said Madame Corona, glancing up with a slight 
shrug of her shoulders, as her guest and traveling com- 
panion, the Marquise de Renardiere, entered. 

“ Indeed ! I saw him as he passed out ; and he saluted 
me as if he had been a Marshal. Why did he come ?” 

Yenetia Corona pointed to the Napoleons, and told the 
story ; rather listlessly and briefly. 

“ Ah I The man has been a gentleman, I dare say. So 
many of them come to our army. I remember General 
Villefleur’s telling me — he commanded here awhile — that 
the ranks of the Zephyrs and Zouaves were full of well- 
born men, utterly good-for-nothing, the handsomest scoun- 
drels possible, who had every gift and every grace, and yet 
come to no better end than a pistol-shot in a ditch or a 
mortal thrust from Bedouin steel. I dare say your Cor- 
poral is one of them.” 

“ It may be so.” 

“But you doubt it, I imagine.” 

“ I am not sure now that I do. But this person is cer- 
tainly unlike a man to whom disgrace has ever attached.” 

“You think your protege, then, has become what he U 
through adversity, I suppose ? Very interesting!” 

35 * 


4U 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ I really can tell you nothing of his antecedents. 
Through his skill at sculpture, and my notice of it, consid- 
erable indignity has been brought upon him ; and a soldier 
can feel, it seems, though it is very absurd that he should ! 
That is all my concern with the matter, except that I have 
to teach his commander not to play with my name in his 
barrack-yard.” 

She spoke with that negligence which always sounded 
very cold, though the words were so gently spoken. Her 
best and most familiar friends always knew when, with that 
courtly chillness, she had signed them their line of demark- 
ation. 

And the Marquise de Rcnardiere said no more, but 
talked of the Ambassador’s poems. 


CHAPTER XXV. 

“LE BON ZIG.” 

Meanwhile the subject of their first discourse returned 
to the Chambree. 

He had encouraged the men to pursue those various in- 
dustries and ingenuities, which, though they are affectedly 
considered against “ discipline,” formed, as he knew well, 
the best preservative from real insubordination, and the 
best instrument in humanizing and ameliorating the condi- 
tion of his comrades. The habit of application alone was 
something gained ; and if it kept them only for awhile from 
the haunts of those coarsest debaucheries, which are the 
only possible form in which the soldier can pursue the for- 
bidden license of vice, it was better than that leisure should 
be spent in that joyless bestiality which made Cecil, once 
used to every refinement of luxury and indulgence, sicken 
with a pitying wonder for those who found in it the only 
shape they knew of “ pleasure.” 

He had seen from the first, in many men of his tribu, ca- 
pabilities that might be turned to endless uses j in the con- 


“le bon zig.” 


415 


script drawn from the populace of the provinces there was 
almost always a knowledge of self-help, and often of some 
trade, coupled with habits of diligence ; in the soldier made 
from the street- Arab of Paris there was always inconceiv- 
able intelligence, rapidity of wit, and plastic vivacity ; in 
the adventurers come, like himself, from higher grades of 
society, and burying a broken career under the shelter of 
the tricolor, there were continually gifts and acquirements, 
and even genius, that had run to seed and brought forth 
no fruit. Of all these France always avails herself in a 
great degree ; but, as far as Cecil’s influence extended, they 
were developed much more than usual. As his own char- 
acter gradually changed under the force of fate, the desire 
for some interest in life grew on him (every man, save one 
absolutely brainless and self-engrossed, feels this sooner or 
later) ; and that interest he found, or rather created, in his 
regiment. All that he could do to contribute to its effi- 
ciency in the field he did ; all that he could do to further 
its internal excellence he did likewise. 

Coarseness perceptibly abated, and violence became much 
rarer in that portion of his corps with which he had imme- 
diately to do ; the men gradually acquired from him a 
better, a higher tone ; they learned to do duties inglorious 
and distasteful as well as they did those which led them to 
the danger and the excitation that they loved ; and, having 
their good faith and sympathy, heart and soul, with him, 
he met, in these lawless leopards of African France, with 
loyalty, courage, generosity, and self-abnegation far sur- 
passing those which he had ever met with in the polished 
civilization of his early experience. 

For their sakes, he spent many of his free hours in the 
Chambree. Many a man, seeing him, there came and 
worked at some ingenious design, instead of going off to 
burn his brains out with brandy, if he had sous enough to 
buy any, or to do some dextrous bit of thieving on a 
native, if he had not. Many a time knowing him to be 
there sufficed to restrain the talk around from lewdness 
and from ribaldry, and turn it into channels at once less 
loathsome and more mirthful, because they felt that obscen- 
ity and vulgarity were alike jarring on his ear, although 
he had never more than tacitly shown that they were so. 


416 


UNI5ER TWO FLAGS. 


A precisian would have been covered with their contumely 
and ridicule ; a saint would have been driven out from 
their midst with every missile merciless tongues and merci- 
less hands could pelt with ; a martinet would have been 
cursed aloud, and cheated, flouted, rebelled against, on 
every possible occasion. But the man who was “ one of 
them” entirely, while yet simply and thoroughly a gen- 
tleman, had great influence — an influence exclusively for 
good. 

The Chambree was empty when he returned ; the men 
were scattered over the town in one of their scant pauses 
of liberty ; there was only the dog of the regiment, Flick- 
Flack, a snow-white poodle, asleep in the heat, on a sack, 
who, without waking, moved his tail in a sign of gratifica- 
tion as Cecil stroked him, and sat down near, betaking 
himself to the work he had in hand. 

It was a stone for the grave of L<§on Ramon. There 
was no other to remember the dead Chasseur ; no other 
beside himself, save an old woman sitting spinning at her 
wheel under the low-sloping shingle roof of a cottage by 
the western Biscayan sea, who, as she spun, and as the 
thread flew, looked with anxious aged eyes over the purple 
waves where she had seen his father — the son of her youth 
• — go down beneath the waters, and murmured ever and 
again, 11 11 r'mendra! il r'viendra /” 

But the thread of her flax would be spun out, and the 
thread of her waning life be broken, ere ever the soldier 
for whom she watched would go back to her and to Lan- 
guedoc. 

For life is brutal ; and to none so brutal as to the aged 
who remember so well, and yet are forgotten as though 
already they were amid the dead. 

Cecil’s hand pressed the graver along the letters, but his 
thoughts wandered far from the place where he was. Alone 
there, in the great sun-scorched barrack- room, the news 
that he had read, the presence he had quitted, seemed alike 
a dream. 

He had never known fully all that he had lost until he 
had stood before the beauty of this woman, in whose deep 
imperial eyes the light of other years seemed to lie, the 
memories of other worlds seemed to slumber. 


417 


“le bon zig.” 

These blue, proud, fathomless eyes ! Why had they 
looked on him ? He had grown content with his fate ; he 
had been satisfied to live and to fall a soldier of France ; 
he had set a seal on that far-off life of his earlier time, and 
had grown to forget that it had ever been. Why had 
chance flung him in her way, that with one careless haughty 
glance, one smile of courteous pity, she should have un- 
done in a moment all the work of a half-score years, and 
shattered in a day the serenity which it had cost him such 
weary self-contest, such hard-fought victory, to attain ? 

She had come to pain, to weaken, to disturb, to influence 
him, to shadow his peace, to wring his pride, to unman his 
resolve, as women do mostly with men. Was life not hard 
enough here already, that she must make it more bitter yet 
to bear ? 

He had been content, with a soldier’s contentment, in 
danger and in duty ; and she must waken the old coiled 
serpent of restless stinging regret which he had thought 
lulled to rest forever 1 

“ If I had my heritage ?” he thought ; and the chisel fell 
from his hands as he looked down the length of the bar- 
rack-room with the blue glare of the African sky through 
the casement. 

Then he smiled at his own folly, in dreaming idly thus 
of things that might have been. 

“ I will see her no more,” he said to himself. “ If I do 
not take care, I shall end by thinking myself a martyr — 
the last refuge and consolation of emasculate vanity, of 
impotent egotism 1” 

For though his whole existence was a sacrifice, it never 
occurred to him that there was anything whatever great in 
its acceptation, or unjust in its endurance. Fie thought 
too little of his life’s value, or of its deserts, ever to con- 
sider by any chance that it had been harshly dealt with, or 
unmeritedly visited. 

At that instant Petit Picpon’s keen, pale, Parisian face 
peered through the door, his great black eyes, that at times 
had so pathetic a melancholy, and at others such a mon- 
keyish mirth and malice, were sparkling excitedly and 
gleefully. 

“ Mon Caporal l” 

2 B 


418 


UNDER TWO FLAGS, 


“ You, Picpon ? What is it ?” 

“ Mon Gaporal, there is great news. La danse com- 
mence Id-bas 

“ Ah ! Are you sure ?” 

“ Sure, mon Gaporal. The Arbicos want a fantasia d 
la clarinettef We are not to know just yet : we are to 
have the ordre de route to-morrow. I overheard our 
officers say so. They think we shall have brisk work. 
And for that they will not punish the vieille lame” 

“ Punish 1 Is there fresh disobedience ? In my squad- 
ron ; in my absence ?” 

He rose instinctively, buckling on the sword which he 
had put aside. 

“ Not in your tribu, mon Caporal,” said Picpon, quickly. 
“ It is not much, either. Only the bon-zig Rac.” 

“ Rake ? What has he been doing ?” 

There was infinite anxiety and vexation in his voice. 
Rake had recently been changed iuto another squadron of 
the regiment, to his great loss and regret ; for not only did 
he miss the man’s bright face and familiar voice from the 
Chambree, but he had much disquietude on the score of his 
safety, for Rake was an incorrigible pratique , had only been 
kept from scrapes and mischief by Cecil’s influence, and 
even despite that had been often in hot water, and once 
even had been drafted for a year or so of chastisement 
among the “ Zephyrs,” a mode of punishment which, but 
for its separation of him from his idol, would have given 
unmitigated delight to the audacious offender. 

“ Yery little, mon Gaporal!” said Picpon, eagerly. “ A 
mere nothing — a bagatelle ! Run a Spahi through the 
stomach, that is all. I don’t think the man is so much as 
dead, even 1” 

“ I hope not, indeed. When will you cease this brawl- 
ing among yourselves? A soldier’s blade should never 
be turned upon men of his own army. How did it happen ?” 

“Pour si peu de chose , mon Gaporal. A woman 1 
They quarreled about a little fruit-seller. The homard% 


* There is fighting broken out yonder, 
f A skirmish to the music of musketry, 
j Spahi. 


419 


r, LE BON ZIG. ,, 

was in fault. Grache-au-nez-d'la-Mort was there before 
him ; and was preferred by the girl ; and women should be 
allowed something to do with choosing their lovers, that I 
think, though it is true they often take the worst man. 
They quarreled ; the homard drew first ; and then, pouf 
et passe! quick as thought, Rac lunged through him. He 
has always a most beautiful stroke. Le Capitaine Argen- 
tier was passing, and made a fuss ; else nothing would have 
been done. They have put him under arrest, but I heard 
them say they would let him free to-night because we 
should march at dawn.” 

“ I will go and see him at once.” 

“Wait, mon Gaporal; I have something to tell you,” 
said Picpon, quickly. “ The zig has a motive in what he 
does. Rac wanted to get the trou* He has done more 
than one bit of mischief only for that.” 

“ Only for what ? He cannot be in love with the trou ?” 

“It serves his turn,” said Picpon, mysteriously. “Did 
you never guess why, mon Gaporal ? Well, I have. 
Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort is a risquetout.f The officers 
know it ; the bureaus know it. He would have mounted, 
mounted, mounted, and been a Captain long before now, if 
he had not been a pratique .” 

“ I know that; so would many of you.” 

“Ah, mon Gaporal; but that is just what Rac does not 
choose. In the books his page beats every man's, except 
yours. They have talked of him many times for the cross 
and for promotion; but whenever they do — cri-crac! he 
goes off to a bit of mischief, and gets himself punished. 
Any rabiat,% long or short, serves his purpose. They think 
him too wild to take out of the ranks. You remember, 
mon Gaporal, that splendid thing that he did five years 
ago at Sabasasta ? Well, you know they spoke of promot- 
ing him for it, and he would have run up all the grades 
like a squirrel, and died a K8bir,§ I dare say. What did 
he do to prevent it ? Why, went that escapade into Oran 
disguised as a Dervish, and got the trou instead.” 

“ To prevent it ? Hot purposely ?” 


* Prison. 

J Term of punishment. 


f A fine fearless soldier. 
\ General. 


420 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Purposely, mon Gaporal said Petit Picpon, with a 
sapient nod that spoke volumes. “ He always does some* 
thing when he thinks promotion is coming — something to 
get himself out of its way, do you see ? And the reason 
is this : ’tis a good zig, and loves you, and will not be put 
over your head. ‘ Me rise afore him V said the zig to me 
once. 1 I’ll have the As de pique* on ray collar fifty times 
over first! He’s a Prince, and I’m a mongrel got in a 
gutter ! I owe him more’n I’ll ever pay, and I’ll kill the 
Kebir himself afore I’ll insult him that way.’ So say little 
to him about the Spahi, mon Gaporal. He loves you 
well, does your Rac.” 

“ Well indeed ! Good God ! what nobility !” 

Picpon glanced at him ; then with the tact of his nation, 
glided away and busied himself teaching Flick-Flack to 
shoulder and present arms, the weapon being a long chi- 
bouque-stick. 

“ After all, Diderot was in the right when he told Rous- 
seau which side of the question to take,” mused Cecil as 
he crossed the barrack-yard a few minutes later to visit the 
incarcerated pratique. “ On my life, civilization develops 
comfort, but I do believe it kills nobility. Individuality 
dies in it, and egotism grows strong and specious. Why is 
it that in a polished life a man, while becoming incapable of 
sinking to crime, almost always becomes also incapable of 
rising to greatness ? Why is it that misery, tumult, priva- 
tion, bloodshed, famine, beget, in such a life as this, such 
countless things of heroism, of endurance, of self-sacrifice 
— things worthy of demigods — in men who quarrel with the 
wolves for a wild-boar’s carcass, for a sheep’s offal ?” 

A question which perplexes, very wearily, thinkers who 
have more time, more subtlety, and more logic to bring to 
its unravelment than Bertie had either leisure or inclination 
to do. 

“ Is this true, Rake — that you intentionally commit 
these freaks of misconduct to escape promotion ?” he asked 
of the man when he stood alone with him in his place of 
confinement. 


* A little mark in black cloth that distinguishes the battalion of 
the “ Incorrigibles.” 


421 


“LE BON ZIGL” 


Rake flushed a little. 

“Mischief’s bred in me, sir; it must come out. It’s just 
bottled up in me like ale ; if I didn’t take the cork out now 
and then, I should fly apieces !” 

“ But many a time when you have been close on the re- 
ward of your splendid gallantry in the field, you have frus- 
trated your own fortunes and the wishes of your superiors 
by wantonly proving yourself unfit for the higher grade 
they were going to raise you to ; why do you do that ?” 

Rake fidgeted restlessly, and, to avoid the awkwardness 
of the question, replied, like a Parliamentary orator, by a 
flow of rhetoric. 

“ Sir, there’s a many chaps like me. They can’t help 
nohow bustin’ out when the fit takes ’em. ’Taint reason- 
able to blame ’em for it ; they’re just made so, like a chest- 
nut’s made to bust its pod, and a chicken to bust its shell. 
Well, you see, sir, France she know that, and she say to 
herself, ‘ Here are these madcaps, if I keep ’em tight in 
hand I shan’t do nothin’ with ’em — they’ll turn obstrep- 
erous and cram my convict-cells. Now I want soldiers, I 
don’t want convicts. I can’t let ’em stay in the Regulars, 
’cause they’ll be for making all the army wildfire like ’em ; 
I’ll just draft ’em by theirselves, treat ’em different, and let 
’em fire away. They’ve got good stuff in ’em, though too 
much of the curb riles ’em.’ Well, sir, she do that; and 
aren’t the Zephyrs as fine a lot of fellows as any in the ser- 
vice ? Of course they are ; but if they’d been in England 
— God bless her, the dear old d — d obstinate soul ! — they’d 
have been druv’ crazy along o’ pipeclay and razors ; she'd 
never have seed what was in ’em, her eyes are so bunged 
up with routine. If a pup riot in the pack, she’s no notion 
but to double-thong him, and a’course, in double-quick 
time, she finds herself obliged to go further and hang him. 
She don’t ever remember that it may be only just along of 
his breedin’, and that he may make a very good hound 
elseways let out a bit, though he’ll spile the whole pack if 
she will be a fool and try to make a steady line-hunter of 
him straight agin his nature.” 

Rake stopped breathless in his rhetoric, which contained 
more truth in it, as also more roughness, than most rhetoric 
does. 


36 


422 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“You are right. But you wander from my question,” 
said Cecil, gently. “ Do you avoid promotion ?” 

“ Yes, sir, I do,” said Rake, something sulkily ; for he 
felt he was being driven “ up a corner.” “ I do. I ain’t 
not one bit fitter for an officer than that rioting pup I talk 
on is fit to lead them crack packs at home. I should be in 
a strait-waistcoat if I was promoted ; and as for the cross 
— Lord, sir, that would get me into a world o’ trouble ! I 
should pawn it for a toss of wine the first day out, or give 
it to the first mouhiera that winked her black eye for it ! 
The star put on my buttons suits me a deal better; if 
you’ll believe me, sir, it do.”* 

Cecil’s eyes rested on him with a look that said far more 
than his answer. 

“ Rake, I know you better than you would let me do, if 
you had your way. My noble fellow ! you reject advance- 
ment, and earn yourself an unjust reputation for mutinous 
conduct, because you are too generous to be given a step 
above mine in the regiment.” 

“ Who’s a been a tellin’ you that trash, sir ?” retorted 
Rake, with ferocity. 

“ No matter who. It is no trash. It is a splendid loy- 
alty of which I am utterly unworthy, and it shall be my 
care that it is known at the Bureaus, so that henceforth 
your great merits may be ” 

“ Stow that, sir !” cried Rake, vehemently. “ Stow that 
if you please 1 Promoted I won’t be — no, not if the Em- 
peror hisself was to order it, and come across here to see 
it done ! A pretty thing, surely 1 Me a officer, and you 
never a one — me a commandin’ of you, and you a salutin’ 
of me I By the Lord, sir ! we might as well see the earap- 
Bcullions a ridin’ in state, and the Marshal a scouring out 
the soup-pots !” 

“Not at all. This Army has not a finer soldier than 
yourself ; you have a right to the reward of your services 
in it. And I assure you you do me a great injustice if 
you think I would not as willingly go out under your 
orders as under those of all the Marshals of the Empire.” 

The tears rushed into the hardy eyes of the redoubtable 


* The star on the metal buttons of the insubordinates, or Zephyrs. 


423 


“LE bon zig.” 

“ Crache-au-nez-d’la-Mort,” though he dashed them away 
in a fury of eloquence. 

“ Sir, if you don’t understand as how you’ve given me a 
power more than all the crosses in the world in saying of 
them there words, why you don’t know me much either, that’s 
all. You’re a gentleman — a right on rare thing that is — 
and, bein’ a gentleman, a course you’d be too generous and 
too proud like not to behave well to me, whether I was a 
servin’ you as I’ve always served you, or a insultin’ of you 
by ridin’ over your head in that way as we’re speakin’ on. 
But I know my place, sir, and I know yours. If it wasn’t 
for that ere Black Hawk — damn him ! — I can’t help it, sir, 
I will damn him, if he shoot me for it — you’d been a Chef 
d’Escadron by now. There ain’t the leastest doubt of it. 
Ask all the zigs what they think. Well, sir, now you know 
I’m a man what do as I say ; if you don’t let me have my 
own way, and if you do the littlest thing to get me a step, 
why, sir, I swear as I’m a livin’ bein’, that I’ll draw on 
Chateauroy the first time I see him afterwards, and slit his 
throat as I’d slit a jackal’s ! There — my oath’s took !” 

And Cecil saw that it would also be kept. The natural 
lawlessness and fiery passion inborn in Rake had of course 
not been cooled by the teachings of African warfare ; and 
his hate was intense against the all-potent Chief of his 
regiment, as intense as the love he bore to the man whom 
he had followed out into exile. 

Cecil tried vainly to argue with him ; all his reasonings 
fell like hailstones on a cuirass, and made no more impres- 
sion ; he was resolute. 

“But listen to one thing,” he urged at last. “ Can you 
not see how you pain me by this self-sacrifice ? If I knew 
that you had attained a higher grade, and wore your epau- 
lettes in this service, can you not fancy I should feel pleas- 
ure then (as I feel regret, even remorse, now) that I 
brought you to Africa through my own follies and misfor- 
tunes ?” 

“ Do you, sir ? There ain’t the least cause for it, then,” 
returned Rake, sturdily. “Lor’ bless you, sir, why this 
life’s made a purpose for me ! If ever a round peg went 
trim and neat into a round hole, it was when I came into 
this here Army. I never was so happy in all my days 


424 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


before. They’re right on good fellows, and ’ll back you to 
the death if so be as you’ve allays been share-and-share- 
alike with ’em, as a zig should. As a private, sir, I’m 
happy and I’m safe; as a officer, I should be kicking 
over the traces, and blunderin’ everlastingly. However, 
there ain’t no need to say a word more about it ; I’ve 
sworn, and you’ve heerd me swear, sir, and you know as 
how I shall keep my oath if ever I’m provoked to it by 
bein’ took notice of. I stuck that homard just now just 
by way of a lark, and only ’cause he come where he’d no 
busiuess to poke his turbaned old pate ; ’tain’t likely as I 
shall stop at givin’ the Hawk two inches of steel if he 
comes such a insult over us both as to offer a blackguard 
like me the epaulettes as you ought to be a wearin 1” 

And Cecil knew that it was hopeless either to persuade 
him to his own advantage or to convince him of his diso- 
bedience in speaking thus of his supreme, before his non- 
commissioned, officer. He was himself, moreover, deeply 
moved by the man’s fidelity. 

He stretched his hand out: 

“ I wish there were more blackguards with hearts like 
yours. I cannot repay your love, Rake, but I can value it.” 

Rake put his own hands behind his back. 

“ God bless you, sir, you’ve repaid it ten dozen times 
over. But you shan’t do that, sir. I told you long ago, 
I’m too much of a scamp ! Some day, p’rhaps, as I said, 
when I’ve settled scores with myself, and wiped off all the 
bad ’uns with a clear sweep, tolerably clean. Not afore, 
sir 1” 

And Rake was too sturdily obstinate not to always carry 
his point. 

The love that he bore to Cecil was very much such a 
wild, chivalric, romantic fidelity as the Cavaliers or the 
Gentlemen of the North bore to their Stuart idols. That 
his benefactor had become a soldier of Africa in no way 
lessened the reverent love of his loyalty, any more than 
theirs was lessened by the adversities of their royal masters. 
Like theirs, also, it had beauty in its blindness — the beauty 
that lies in every pure unselfishness. 

Meanwhile, Picpon’s news was correct. 


425 


“le bon zig.” 

The regiment was ordered out & la danse* There was 
fresh war in the interior ; and wherever there was the hot- 
test slaughter, there the Black Hawk always flew down 
with his falcon-flock. When Cecil left his incorrigible zig, 
the trumpets were sounding an assembly ; there were noise, 
tumult, eagerness, excitement, delighted zest on every side ; 
a general order was read to the enraptured squadrons ; 
they were to leave the town at the first streak of dawn. 

There were before them death, deprivation, long days 
of famine, long days of drought and thirst ; parching sun- 
baked roads ; bitter chilly nights ; fiery furnace-blasts of 
sirocco; killing, pitiless, northern winds; hunger, only 
sharpened by a snatch of raw meat or a handful of maize ; 
and the probabilities, ten to one, of being thrust under the 
sand to rot, or left to have their skeletons picked clean by 
the vultures. But what of that ? There were also the 
wild delight of combat, the freedom of lawless warfare, 
the joy of deep strokes thrust home, the chance of plunder, 
of wine-skins, of cattle, of women ; above all, that lust for 
slaughter which burns so deep down in the hidden souls 
qf men, and gives them such brotherhood with wolf, and 
vulture, and tiger, when once its flame bursts forth. 

That evening, at the Villa A'ioussa there gathered a 
courtly assembly, of much higher rank than Algiers can 
commonly afford, because many of station as lofty as her 
own had been drawn thither to follow her to what the 
Princess Corona called her banishment — an endurable 
banishment enough under those azure skies, in that clear 
elastic air, and with that charming “ bonbonnibre” in 
which to dwell, yet still a banishment to the reigning 
beauty of Paris, to one who had the habits and the com- 
mands of a wholly undisputed sovereignty in the royal 
splendor of her womanhood. 

There was a variety of distractions to prevent ennui ; 
there were half a dozen clever Paris actors playing the 
airiest of vaudevilles in the Bijou theater, beyond the 
drawing-rooms ; there were some celebrated Italian singers 
whom an Imperial Prince had brought over in his yacht ; 
there was the best music ; there was wit as well as homage 


* On the march. 

36 * 


426 


UNDER TWO FLAGS 


whispered in her ear. Yet she was not altogether amused ; 
she was a little touched with ennui. 

“ Those men are very stupid. They have not half the 
talent of that soldier !” she thought once, turning from a 
Peer of France, an Austrian Arch-Duke, and a Russian 
diplomatist. And she smiled a little, furling her fan and 
musing on the horror that the triad of fashionable con- 
querors near her would feel if they knew that she thought 
them duller than an African lascar! 

But they only told her things of which she had been 
long weary, specially of her own beauty ; he had told her 
of things totally unknown to her, things real, terrible, 
vivid, strong, sorrowful — strong as life, sorrowful as death. 

“ Chateauroy and his Chasseurs have an ordre de route,” 
a voice was saying, that moment, behind her chair. 

11 Indeed ?” said another. “ The Black Hawk is never 
so happy as when unhooded. When do they go ?” 

“ To-morrow. At dawn.” 

“ There is always fighting here, I suppose ?” 

“ Oh yes. The losses in men are immense ; only the 
journals would get a communique , or worse, if they ven- 
tured to say so in France. How delicious La Doche is 1 
She comes in again with the next scene.” 

The Princess Corona listened ; and her attention wan- 
dered farther from the Arch-Duke, the Peer, and the diplo- 
matist, as from the Vaudeville. She did not find Mme. 
Doche very charming ; and she was absorbed for a time 
looking at the miniatures on her fan. 

At the same moment, through the lighted streets of 
Algiers, Cigarette, like a union of fairy and of fury, was 
flying with the news. Cigarette had seen the flame of war 
at its height, and had danced in the midst of its whitest 
heat, as young children dance to see the fires leap red in 
the black winter’s night. Cigarette loved the battle, the 
charge, the wild music of bugles, the thunder- tramp of bat- 
talions, the sirocco-sweep of light squadrons, the mad ta- 
rantala of triumph when the slaughter was done, the grand 
swoop of the Eagles down unto the carnage, the wild 
hurrah of France. 

She loved them with all her heart and soul ; and she 
flew now through the starlit sultry night, crying, “ La 


42T 


“LK BON Z1Q” 

guerre ! La guerre ! La guerre 1” and chanting to the en- 
raptured soldiery a Marseillaise of her own improvisation, 
all slang, and doggerel, and barrack-grammar; but fire- 
giving as a torch, and rousing as a bugle in the way she 
gang it, waving the tricolor high above her head : 


Fantasia, 

Deo Gratia! 

En avant ! 

On t’attend ! 

Au cor et & cri 
Suivez, mes Spahis, 

On s’dlance & la danse, 

Pour la gloire de la France. 
Fusillons, 

Bataillons ! 

Et marckons 
Au guidons ! 

Va, loustic, 

Et du cric 
Vides ton verre, 

A la guerre ! 

C’est l’Amie du Drapeau 
Qui s’appelle son troupeau! 
Faisons pouff a l’Emir, 

Faisons style a venir, 

De l’avoine la moisson, 

Portera belle boisson, 

Le Zephyr au douar 
F’ra retentir son cor, 
Chasse-marais cont’ fleurettes 
S’emparant des fillettes, 

Et sous l’Aigle mes Roumis, 
yont gorger les Arbis, 

A la musique si nette 
De la haute clarinette ! 

Razzia, 

Grazia, 

Est ici, 

Mes Spakis, 

A l’amour! Aux beaux jours! 
Rataplan des tambours, 

Nous appelle, “ R’lin tintin, 
Vite au rire, au but in !” 

Vive la gloire! 

Vive le boire ! 

Vive le vin rose du sang ! 

Vive le feu volage des rangs t 




428 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Viv« tout 9a qui va nous faire 
Paradis au fond d’enfer, 

Tar la Guerre, par la Guerre! 
Enavant! Allons! Buvons! 
En avant ! Allons ! Mourrons ! 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

ZARAILA. 

The African day was at its noon. 

From the first break of dawn the battle had raged ; now, 
at raid-day, it was at its height. Far in the interior, al- 
most on the edge of the great desert, in that terrible season 
when air that is flame by day is ice by night, and when the 
scorch of a blazing sun may be followed in an hour by the 
blinding fury of a snow-storm, the slaughter had gone on 
hour through hour under a shadowless sky, blue as steel, 
hard as a sheet of brass. The Arabs had surprised the 
French encampment where it lay in the center of an arid 
plain that was called Zaraila. Jlovering like a cloud of 
hawks on the entrance of the Sahara, massed together for 
one mighty if futilo effort, with all their ancient war-lust, 
and with a new despair, the tribes who refused the yoke of 
the alien empire were once again in arms, were once again 
combined in defense of those limitless kingdoms of drifting 
sand, of that beloved belt of bare and desolate land so use- 
less to the conqueror, so dear to the nomad. When they 
had been, as it had been thought, beaten back into the 
desert wilderness, when, without water and without cattle, 
it had been calculated that they would, of sheer necessity, 
bow themselves in submission, or perish of famine and of 
thirst, they had recovered their ardor, their strength, their 
resistance, their power to harass without ceasing, if they 
could never arrest, the enemy. They had cast the torch of 
war afresh into the land, and here, southward, the flame 
burned bitterly, and with a merciless tongue devoured the 


ZARAILA. 


429 


lives of men, licking them up as a forest fire the dry leaves 
and the touchwood. 

Circling, sweeping, silently, swiftly, with that rapid 
spring, that marvelous whirlwind of force, that is of Africa, 
and of Africa alone, the tribes had rushed down in the 
darkness of night, lightly as a kite rashes through the 
gloom of the dawn. For once the vigilance of the invader 
served him naught ; for once the Frankish camp was sur- 
prised off its guard. While the air was still chilly with 
the breath of the night, while the first gleam of morning 
had barely broken through the mists of the east, while the 
picket-fires burned through the dusky gloom, and the sen- 
tinels and videttes paced slowly to and fro, and circled 
round, hearing nothing worse than the stealthy tread of 
the jackal, or the muffled flight of a night-bird, afar in the 
south a great dark cloud had risen, darker than the brood- 
ing shadows of the earth and sky. 

The cloud swept onward, like a mass of cirri, in those 
shadows shrouded. Fleet as though wind-driven, dense as 
though thunder-charged, it moved over the plains. As it 
grew nearer and nearer, it grew grayer, a changing mass 
of white and black that fused, in the obscurity, into a 
shadow color ; a dense array of men and horses flitting 
noiselessly like spirits, and as though guided alone by one 
rein and moved alone by one breath and one will ; not a bit 
champed, not a linen-fold loosened, not a shiver of steel 
was heard ; as silently as the winds of the desert sweep up 
northward over the plains, so they rode now, host upon 
host of the warriors of the soil. 

The outlying videttes, the advanced sentinels, had scru- 
tinized so long through the night every wavering shade of 
cloud and moving form of buffalo in the dim distance, that 
their sleepless eyes, strained and aching, failed to distin- 
guish this moving mass that was so like the brown plains 
and starless sky that it could scarce be told from them. 
The night, too, was bitter; northern cold cut hardly chil- 
lier than this that parted the blaze of one hot day from the 
blaze of another. The sea-winds were blowing cruelly keen, 
and men who at noon gladly stripped to their shirts, shiv- 
ered now where they lay under canvas. 

Awake while his comrades slept around him, Cecil was 


430 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


stretched half unharnessed. The foraging duty of the past 
twenty-four hours had been work harassing and heavy, in- 
glorious and full of fatigue. The country round was bare 
as a table-rock; the water-courses poor, choked with dust 
and stones, unfed as yet by the rains or snows of the ap- 
proaching winter. The horses suffered sorely, the men 
scarce less. The hay for the former was scant and bad ; 
the rations for the latter often cut off by flying skirmishers 
of the foe. The campaign, so far as it had gone, had been 
fruitless, yet had cost largely in human life. The men 
died rapidly of dysentery, disease, and the chills of the 
nights, and had severe losses in countless obscure skirm- 
ishes, that served no end except to water the African soil 
with blood.* 

True, France would fill the gaps up as fast as they oc- 
curred, and the Moniteur would only allude to the present 
operations when it could give a flourishing line descriptive 
of the Arabs being driven back, decimated, to the borders 
of the Sahara. But as the flourish of the Moniteur would 
never reach a thousand little way-side huts, and sea-side 
cabins, and vine-dressers’ sunny nests, where the memory 
of some lad who had gone forth never to return would 
leave a deadly shadow athwart the humble threshold, so the 
knowledge that they were only so many automata in the 
hands of government, whose loss would merely be noted 
that it might be efficiently supplied, was not that wine- 
draught of La Gloire, which poured the strength and the 
daring of gods into the limbs of the men of Jena and of 
Austerlitz. Still, there was the war-lust in them, and 
there was the fire of France; they fought not less superbly 
here, where to be food for jackal and kite was their like- 
liest doom, than their sires had done under the eagles of 
the First Empire, when the Conscript hero of to-day was 
the glittering Marshal of to-raorrow. 

Cecil had awakened while the camp still slept. Do what 
he would, force himself into the fullness of this fierce and 
hard existence as he might, he could not burn out or banish 
a thing that had many a time haunted him, but never as it 
did now — the remembrance of a woman. He almost 
laughed as he lay there on a pile of rotting straw, and 
wrung the truth out of his own heart, that he — a soldier of 


ZARAILA. 


431 


these exiled squadrons — was mad enough to love that 
woman, whose deep proud eyes had dwelt with such serene 
pity upon him. 

Yet h‘s hand clinched on the straw as it had clinched 
once when the operator’s knife had cut down through the 
bones of his breast to reach a bullet that, left in his chest, 
would have been death. If in the sight of men he had 
only stood in the rank that was his by birthright, he could 
have strived for — it might be that he could have roused — . 
some answering passion in her. But that chance was lost 
to him forever. Well, it was but one thing more that was 
added- to all that he had of his own will given up. He 
was dead ; he must be content, as the dead must be, to 
leave the warmth of kisses, the glow of delight, the posses- 
sion of a woman’s loveliness, the homage of men’s honor, 
the gladness of successful desires, to those who still lived 
in the light he had quitted. He had never allowed him- 
self the emasculating indulgence of regret; he flung it off 
him now. 

Flick-Flack, coiled asleep in his bosom, thrilled, stirred, 
and growled. He rose, and, with the little dog under his 
arm, looked out from the canvas. He knew that the most 
vigilant sentry in the service had not the instinct for a foe 
afar off that Flick-Flack possessed. He gazed keenly 
southward, the poodle growling on ; that cloud so dim, so 
distant, caught his sight. Was it a moving herd, a shifting 
mist, a shadow-play between the night and dawn ? 

For a moment longer he watched it ; then what it was 
he knew, or felt by such strong instinct as makes knowl- 
edge ; and like the blast of a clarion his alarm rang over 
the unarmed and slumbering camp. 

An instant, and the hive of men, so still, so motionless, 
broke into violent movement; and from the tents the half- 
clothed sleepers poured, wakened, and fresh in wakening as 
hounds. Perfect discipline did the rest. With marvelous, 
with matchless swiftness and precision they harnessed and 
got under arms. They were but fifteen hundred or so in 
all — a single squadron of Chasseurs, two battalions of 
Zouaves, half a corps of Tirailleurs, and some Turcos; only 
a branch of the main body, and without artillery. But they 
were some of the flower of the army of Algiers, and they 


432 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


roused in a second, with the vivacious ferocity of the bound- 
ing tiger, with the glad eager impatience for the slaughter 
of the unloosed hawk. Yet, rapid in its wondrous celerity 
as their united action was, it was not so rapid as the down- 
ward sweep of that war-cloud that came so near, with the 
tossing of white draperies and the shine of countless sabers, 
now growing clearer and clearer out of the darkness, till, 
with the whir like the noise of an eagle’s wings, and a 
swoop like an eagle’s seizure, the Arabs whirled down upon 
them, met a few yards in advance by the answering charge 
of the Light Cavalry. 

There was a crash as if rock were hurled upon rock, as 
the Chasseurs, scarce seated in saddle, rushed forward to 
save the pickets, to encounter the first blind force of the 
attack, and to give the infantry, further in, more time for 
harness and defense. Out of the caverns of the night an 
armed multitude seemed to have suddenly poured. A 
moment ago they had slept in security ; now thousands on 
thousands whom they could not number, whom they could 
but dimly even perceive, were thrown on them in immeas- 
urable hosts, which the encircling cloud of dust served but 
to render vaster, ghastlier, and more majestic. The Arab 
line stretched out with wings that seemed to extend on and 
on without end ; the line of the Chasseurs was not one-half 
its length ; they were but a single squadron flung in their 
stirrups, scarcely clothed, knowing only that the foe was 
upon them, caring only that their sword-hands were hard on 
their weapons. With all the elan of France they launched 
themselves forward to break the rush of the desert horses ; 
they met with a terrible sound, like falling trees, like clash- 
ing metal. 

The hoofs of the 'rearing chargers struck each other’s 
breasts, and these bit and tore at each other’s manes, while 
their riders reeled down dead. Frank and Arab were blent 
in one inextricable mass o,s the charging squadrons en- 
countered. The outer wings of the tribes were spared the 
shock, and swept on to meet the bayonets of Zouaves and 
Turcos as at their swift foot-gallop the Enfans Perdus of 
France threw themselves forward from the darkness. The 
cavalry was enveloped in the overwhelming numbers of the 
center; and the flanks seemed to cover the Zouaves and 


ZARAILA. 433 

Tirailleurs as some great settling mist may cover the cattlo 
who move beneath it. 

It was not a battle; it was a frightful tangling of men 
and brutes. No contest of modern warfare, such as com- 
mences and conquers by a duel of artillery, and, sometimes, 
gives the victory to whosoever has the superiority of ord- 
nance, but a conflict, hand to hand, breast to breast, life 
for life, a Homeric combat of spear and of sword even 
while the first volleys of the answering musketry pealed 
over the plain. 

For once the Desert avenged in like that terrible inex- 
haustibility of supply wherewith the Empire so long had 
crushed them beneath the overwhelming difference of num- 
bers. It was the Day of Mazagran once more, as the light 
of the morning broke, gray, silvered, beautiful, in the far, 
dim distance, beyond the tawny seas of reeds. Smoke and 
sand soon densely rose above the struggle, white, hot, 
blinding ; but out from it the lean dark Bedouin faces, the 
snowy haicks, the red burnous, the gleam of the Tunisian 
muskets, the flash of the silver-hilted yataghans, were 
seen fused in a mass with the brawny naked necks of the 
Zouaves, with the shine of the French bayonets, with the 
tossing manes and glowing nostrils of the Chasseurs’ horses, 
with the torn, stained silk of the raised Tricolor, through 
which the storm of balls flew thick and fast as hail, yet 
whose folds were never suffered to fall, though again and 
again the hand that held its staff was cut away or was un- 
loosed in death, yet ever found another to take its charge 
before the Flag could once have trembled in the enemy’s 
sight. 

The Chasseurs could not charge ; they were hemmed in, 
packed between bodies of horsemen that pressed them to- 
gether as between iron plates; now and then they could 
cut their way through, clear enough to reach their comrades 
of the demie cavalerie, but as often as they did so, so often 
tl^ overwhelming numbers of the Arabs surged in on them 
afresh like a flood, and closed upon them, and drove them 
back. 

Every soldier in the squadron that lived kept his life by 
sheer, breathless, ceaseless, hand-to-hand sword-play, hew- 
ing right and left, front and rear, without pause, as in the 
2 C 31 


434 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


great tangled forests of the west men hew aside branch and 
brushwood ere they can force one step forward. 

The gleam of the dawn spread in one golden glow of 
morning, and the day rose radiant over the world; they 
stayed not for its beauty or its peace; the carnage went on 
hour upon hour; men began to grow drunk with slaughter 
as with raid. It was sublimely grand ; it was hideously 
hateful — this wild beast struggle, this heaving tumult of 
striving lives that ever and anon stirred the vast war-cloud 
of smoke and broke from it as the lightning from the night. 
The sun laughed in its warmth over a thousand hills and 
streams, over the blue seas lying northward, and over the 
yellow sands of the south; but the touch of its heat only 
made the flame in their blood burn fiercer; the fullness of 
its light only served to show them clearer where to strike 
and how to slay. 

It was bitter, stifling, cruel work ; with their mouths 
choked with sand, with their throats caked with thirst, with 
their eyes blind with smoke ; cramped as in a vice, scorched 
with the blaze of powder, covered with blood and with 
dustj while the steel was thrust through nerve and sinew, 
or the shot plowed through bone and flesh. The answer- 
ing fire of the Zouaves and Tirailleurs kept the Arabs fur- 
ther at bay, and mowed them faster down; but in the 
Chasseurs’ quarter of the field — parted from the rest of 
their comrades as they had been by the rush of that broken 
charge with which they had sought to save the camp and 
arrest the foe — the worst pressure of the attack was felt, 
and the fiercest of the slaughter fell. 

The Chef d’Escadron had been shot dead as they had 
first swept out to encounter the advance of the desert horse- 
men; one by one the officers had been cut down, singled 
out by the keen eyes of their enemies, and throwing them- 
selves into the deadliest of the carnage with the impetuous 
self-devotion characteristic of their service. At the last 
there remained but a mere handful out of all the brilliant 
squadron that had galloped down in the gray of the dawn 
to meet the whirlwind of Arab fury. At their head was 
Cecil. 

Two horses had been killed under him, and he had thrown 
himself afresh across unwounded chargers, whose riders 


ZAEAILA. 


435 


had fallen in the melee, and at whose bridles he had caught 
as he shook himself free of the dead animals’ stirrups. His 
head was uncovered ; his uniform, hurriedly thrown on, nad 
been torn aside, and his chest was bare to the red folds of 
his sash ; he was drenched with blood, not his own, that 
had rained oh him as he fought; and his face and his hands 
were black with smoke and with powder. He could not 
see a yard in front of him ; he could not tell how the day 
went anywhere, save in that corner where his own troop 
was hemmed in. As fast as they beat the Arabs back, and 
forced themselves some clearer space, so ?ast the tribes 
closed in afresh. No orders reached him from the General 
of Brigade in command ; except for the well-known war- 
shouts of the Zouaves that ever and again rang above the 
din, he could not tell whether the French battalions were not 
cut utterly to pieces under the immense numerical superior- 
ity of theii foes. All he could see was that every officer 
of Chasseurs was down, and that unless he took the vacant 
place, and rallied them together, the few score troopers 
that were still left would scatter, confused and demoralized, 
as the best soldiers will at times when they can see no chief 
to follow. 

He spurred the horse he had just mounted against the 
dense crowd opposing him, against the hard black wall of 
dust, and smoke, and steel, and savage faces, and lean 
swarthy arms, which were all that his eyes could see, and 
that seemed impenetrable as granite, moving and changing 
though it was. He thrust the gray against it, while he 
waved his sword above his head : 

“En avant , mes freres! France! France! France /” 

His voice, well known, well loved, thrilled the hearts of 
his comrades, and brought them together like a trumpet- 
call. They had gone with him many a time into the hell 
of battle, into the jaws of death. They surged about him 
now, striking, thrusting, forcing, with blows of their sabers 
or their lances and blows of their beasts’ fore-feet, a pas- 
sage one to another, until they were reunited once more as 
one troop, while their shrill shouts, like an oath of ven- 
geance, echoed after him in the butchery, that has pealed 
victorious over so many fields from the soldiery of France. 
They loved him ; he had called them his brethren. They 


436 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


were like lambs for him to lead, like tigers for him to in- 
cite. 

They could scarcely see his face in that great red mist of 
combat, in that horrible stifling pressure on every side that 
jammed them as if they were in a press of iron, and gave them 
no power to pause, though their animals’ hoofs struck the 
lingering life out of some half-dead comrade, or trampled 
over the writhing limbs of the brother-in-arms they loved 
dearest and best. But his voice reached them, clear and 
ringing in its appeal for sake of the country they never once 
forgot or once reviled, though in her name they were 
starved and beaten like rebellious hounds, though in her 
cause they were exiled all their manhood through under 
the sun of this cruel, ravenous, burning Africa. They 
could see him lift aloft the Eagle he had caught from the 
last hand that had borne it, the golden gleam of the young 
morning flashing like flame upon the brazen wings ; and 
they shouted, as with one throat, “ Mazagran ! Mazagran /” 
As the battalion of Mazagran had died keeping the ground 
through the whole of the scorching day, while the fresh 
hordes poured down on them like ceaseless torrents snow- 
fed and exhaustless, so they were ready to hold the ground 
here, until of all their numbers there should be left not one 
living man. 

He glanced back on them, guarding his head the while 
from the lances that were rained on him ; and he lifted the 
Guidon higher and higher, till, out of the ruck and the 
throng, the brazen bird caught afresh the rays of the rising 
sun. 

“ Suivez-moi /” he shouted. 

Then, like arrows launched at once from a hundred bows, 
they charged, he still slightly in advance of them, the bridle 
flung upon his horse’s neck, his head and breast bare, one 
hand striking aside with his blade the steel shafts as they 
poured on him, the other holding high above the press the 
Eagle of the Bonapartes. 

The effort was superb. 

Dense bodies of Arabs parted them in the front from the 
camp where the battle raged, harassed them in the rear 
with flying shots and hurled lances, and forced down on 
them on either side, like the closing jaws of a trap. The 


ZARAILA. 


437 


impetuosity of their onward movement was, for the moment, 
irresistible ; it bore headlong all before it ; the desert 
horses recoiled, and the desert riders themselves yielded, 
crushed, staggered, trodden aside, struck aside, by the 
tremendous impetus with which the Chasseurs were thrown 
upon them. For the moment, the Bedouins gave way, 
shaken and confused, as at the head of the French they saw 
this man, with his hair blowing in the wind, and the sun 
on the fairness of his face, ride down on them thus un- 
harmed, though a dozen spears were aimed at his naked 
breast, dealing strokes sure as death right and left as he 
went, with the light from the hot blue skies on the ensign 
of France that he bore. 

They knew him ; they had met him in many conflicts ; 
and wherever the “fair Frank,” as they called him, came, 
there they knew of old the battle was hard to win ; bitter 
to the bitterest end, whether that end were defeat, or vic- 
tory costly as defeat in its achievement. 

And for the moment they recoiled under the shock of 
that fiery onslaught; for the moment they parted, and 
wavered and oscillated beneath the impetus with which he 
hurled his hundred Chasseurs on them, with that light, 
swift, indescribable rapidity and resistlessness of attack 
characteristic of the African Cavalry. 

Though a score or more, one on another, had singled 
him out with special and violent attack, he had gone, as 
yet, unwounded, save for a lance-thrust in his shoulder, of 
which, in the heat of the conflict, he was unconscious. 
The “fighting fury” was upon him; and when once this 
had been lit in him, the Arabs knew of old that the fiercest 
vulture in the Frankish ranks never struck so surely home 
as this hand that his comrades called “main de femme , 
mais main de fer .” 

As he spurred his horse down on them now, twenty 
blades glittered against him ; the foremost would have cut 
straight down through the bone of his bared chest and 
killed him at a single lunge, but as its steel flashed in the 
sun, one of his troopers threw himself against it, and par- 
ried the stroke from him by sheathing it in his own breast. 
The blow was mortal ; and the one who had saved him 
reeled down off his saddle under the hoofs of the tram- 
37 * 


438 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


pling chargers. “ Picpon s'en souvient , v he murmured 
with a smile ; and as the charge swept onward, Cecil, with 
a great cry of horror, saw the feet of the maddened horses 
strike to pulp the writhing body, and saw the black wistful 
eyes of the Enfant de Paris look upward to him once,* 
with love, and fealty, and unspeakable sweetness gleaming 
through their darkened sight. 

But to pause was impossible. Though the French horses 
were forced with marvelous dexterity through a bristling 
forest of steel, though the remnant of the once-glittering 
squadron was cast against them in as headlong a daring as 
if it had half the regiments of the Empire at its back, the 
charge availed little against the hosts of the desert that 
had rallied and swooped down afresh almost as soon as 
they had been, for the instant of the shock, panic-stricken. 
The hatred of the opposed races was aroused in all its 
blind ravening passion ; the conquered had the conquering 
nation for once at their mercy ; for once at tremendous 
disadvantage ; on neither side was there aught except that 
one instinct for slaughter, which, once awakened, kills 
every other in the breast in which it burns. 

The Arabs had cruel years to avenge — years of a loathed 
tyranny, years of starvation and oppression, years of con- 
stant flight southward, with no choice but submission or 
death. They had deadly memories to wash out — memories 
of brethren who had been killed like carrion by the in- 
vaders’ shot and steel ; of nomadic freedom begrudged 
and crushed by civilization ; of young children murdered 
in the darkness of the caverns, with the sulphurous smoke 
choking the innocent throats that had only breathed the 
golden air of a few summers ; of women, well beloved, 
torn from them in the hot flames of burning tents and out- 
raged before their eyes with insult whose end was a bayo- 
net-thrust into their breasts — breasts whose sin was fidelity 
to the vanquished. 

They had vengeance to do that made every stroke seem 
righteous and holy in their sight ; that nerved each of their 
bare and sinewy arms as with the strength of a thousand 
limbs. Right — so barren, so hopeless, so unavailing — had 
long been with them. Now with it was added at last the 
power of might ; and they exercised the power with the 


ZAEAILA. 


439 


savage ruthlessness of the desert. They closed in on every 
side ; wheeling their swift coursers hither and thither ; 
striking with lance and blade ; hemming in, beyond escape, 
the doomed fragment of the Frankish squadron till there 
remained of them but one small nucleus, driven close to- 
gether, rather as infantry will form than as cavalry usually 
does — a ring of horsemen, of which every one had his face 
to the foe ; a solid circle curiously wedged one against the 
Other, with the bodies of chargers and of men deep around 
them, and with the ground soaked with blood till the sand 
was one red morass. 

Cecil held the Eagle still, and looked round on the few 
left to him. 

“You are sons of the Old Guard: die like them.” 

They answered with a pealing cry, terrible as the cry of 
the lion in the hush of night, but a shout that had in it 
assent, triumph, fealty, victory, even as they obeyed him 
and drew up to die, while in their front was the young 
brow of Petit Picpon turned upward to the glare of the 
skies. 

There was nothing for them but to draw up thus, and 
await their butchery, defending the Eagle to the last; 
looking till the last toward that “ woman’s face of their 
leader,” as they had often termed it, that was to them 
now as the face of Napoleon was to the soldiers who loved 
him. 

There was a pause, brief as is the pause of the lungs to 
take a fuller breath. The Arabs honored these men, who 
alone and in the midst of the hostile force, held their 
ground and prepared thus to be slaughtered one by one, 
till of all the squadron that had ridden out in the darkness 
of the dawn there should be only a black, huddled, stiffened 
heap of dead men and of dead beasts. The chief who led 
them pressed them back, withholding them from the end 
that was so near to their bands when they should stretch 
that single ring of horsemen all lifeless in the dust. 

“ You are great warriors,” he cried, in the Sabir tongue ; 
“surrender, we will spare !” 

Cecil looked back once more on the fragment of his 
troop, and raised the Eagle higher aloft where the wings 
should glisten in the fuller day. Half naked, scorched, 


440 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


blinded, with an open gash in his shoulder where the lance 
had struck, and with his brow wet with the great dews of 
the noon-heat and the breathless toil, his eyes were clear 
as they flashed with the light of the sun in them ; his 
mouth smiled as he answered : 

“Have we shown ourselves cowards, that you think we 
shall yield ?” 

A hourrali of wild delight from the Chasseurs he led 
greeted and ratified the choice : “ On meurt — on ne se rend 
pas f” they shouted in the words, which, even if they be 
but legendary, are too true to the spirit of the soldiers of 
France not to be as truth in their sight. Then, with their 
swords above their heads, they waited for the collision of 
the terrible attack which would fall on them upon every 
side, and strike all the sentient life out of them before the 
sun should be one point higher in the heavens. It came : 
with a yell as of wild beasts in their famine, the Arabs 
threw themselves forward, the chief himself singling out 
the “fair Frank” with the violence of a lion flinging him- 
self on a leopard. One instant longer, one flash of time, 
and the tribes pressing on them would have massacred 
them like cattle driven into the pens of slaughter. Ere it 
could be done, a voice like the ring of a silver trumpet 
echoed over the field : 

“ En avant / En avant/ Tue,tue, tue /” 

Above the din, the shouts, the tumult, the echoing of the 
distant musketry, that silvery cadence rung ; down into the 
midst, with the Tricolor waving above her head, the bridle 
of her fiery mare between her teeth, the raven of the dead 
Zouave flying above her head, and her pistol leveled in 
deadly aim, rode Cigarette. 

The lightning fire of the crossing swords played round 
her, the glitter of the lances dazzled her eyes, the reek of 
smoke and of carnage was round her ; but she dashed down 
into the heart of the conflict as gayly as though she rode 
at a review, laughing, shouting, waving the torn colors that 
she grasped, with her curls blowing back in the breeze, and 
her bright young face set in the warrior’s lust. Behind 
her, by scarcely a length, galloped three squadrons of Chas- 
seurs and Spahis; trampling headlong over the corpse- 


ZARAILA. 


441 


strewn field, and breaking through the masses of the Arabs 
as though they were seas of corn. 

She wheeled her mare round by Cecil’s side at the mo* 
ment when, with six swift passes of his blade he had 
warded off the Chief’s blows and sent his own sword down 
through the chest-bones of the Bedouin’s mighty form. 

“Well struck I The day is turned. Charge !” 

She gave the order as though she were a Marshal of the 
Empire, the sun-blaze full on her where she sat on the rear- 
ing, fretting, half-bred gray, with the Tricolor folds above 
her head, and her teeth tight gripped on the chain-bridle, 
and her face all glowing and warm and full of the fierce 
fire of war — a little Amazon in scarlet, and blue, and gold ; 
a young Jeanne d’Arc, with the crimson fez in lieu of the 
silvered casque, and the gay broideries of her fantastic dress 
instead of the breastplate of steel. And with the Flag of 
her idolatry, the Flag that was as her religion, floating 
back as she went, she spurred her mare straight against 
the Arabs, straight over the lifeless forms of the hundreds 
slain ; and after her poured the fresh squadrons of cavalry, 
the ruby burnous of the Spahis streaming on the wind as 
their darling led them on to retrieve the day for France. 

Not a bullet struck, not a saber grazed hef ; but there, 
in the heat and the press of the worst of the slaughter, 
Cigarette rode hither and thither, to and fro, her voice ring- 
ing like a bird’s song over the field, in command, in ap- 
plause, in encouragement, in delight; bearing her standard 
aloft and untouched ; dashing heedless through a storm of 
blows; cheering on her “children” to the charge again 
and again ; and all the while with the sunlight full on her 
radiant spirited head, and with the grim gray raven flying 
above her, shrieking shrilly its “ Tue, tue, tue ! ” The 
Army believed with superstitious faith in the potent spell 
of that veteran bird, and the story ran that whenever he 
flew above a combat France was victor before the sun set. 
The echo of the raven’s cry, and the presence of the child 
who, they knew, would have a thousand musket-balls fired 
in her fair young breast rather than live to see them de- 
feated, made the fresh squadrons sweep in like a whirlwind, 
bearing down all before them. 

Cigarette saved the day. 


442 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE LOVE OF THE AMAZON. 

Before the sun had declinedfrom his zenith the French 
were masters of the field, and pursued the retreat of the 
Arabs till for miles along the plain the line of their flight 
was marked with horses that had dropped dead in the 
strain, and with the motionless forms of their desert-riders, 
their cold hands clinched in the loose hot sands, and their 
stern faces turned upward to the cloudless scorch of their 
native skies, under whose freedom they would never again 
ride forth to the joyous clash of the cymbals and the fierce 
embrace of the death-grapple. * 

When at length she returned, coming in with her ruth- 
less Spahis, whose terrible passions she feared no more 
than Virgil’s Volseiftu huntress feared the beasts of forest 
and plain, the raven still hovered above her exhausted 
mare, the torn flag was still in her left hand ; and the 
bright laughter, the flash of ecstatic triumph, was still in 
her face as she sang the last lines of her own war-chant. 
The leopard nature was roused in her. She was a soldier ; 
death had been about her from her birth ; she neither 
feared to give nor to receive it ; she was proud as ever 
was young Pompeius flushed with the glories of his first 
eastern conquests ; she was happy as such elastic, sun-lit, 
dauntless youth as hers alone can be, returning in the red- 
dening after-glow at the head of her comrades to the camp 
that she h^d saved. 

She could be cruel — women are, when roused, as many 
a revolution has shown ; she could be heroic — she would 
have died a hundred deaths for France ; she was vain with 
a vivacious childlike vanity ; she was brave with a bra- 
very beside which many a man’s high courage palled. 
Cruelty, heroism, vanity, and bravery were all on fire, and 
all fed to their uttermost, most eager, most ardent flame, 


THE LOVE OP TnE AMAZON. 


443 


now that she came back at the head of her Spahis ; while all 
who remained of the soldiers who, but for her, would have 
been massacred long ere then, without one spared among 
them, threw themselves forward, crowded round her, 
caressed, and laughed, and wept, and shouted with all the 
changes of their intense mercurial temperaments, kissed 
her boots, her sash, her mare’s drooping neck, and, lifting 
her, with wild vivas that rent the sky, on to the shoulders 
of the four tallest men among them, bore her to the pres- 
ence of the only officer of high rank who had survived the 
terrors of the day, a Chef de Bataillon of the Zouaves. 

And he, a grave and noble-looking veteran, uncovered 
his head and bowed before her as courtiers bow before their 
queens. 

“ Mademoiselle, you saved the honor of France. In the 
name of France, I thank you.” 

The tears rushed swift and hot into Cigarette’s bright 
eyes — tears of joy, tears of pride. She was but a child 
still in much, and she could be moved by the name of 
France as other children by the name of their mothers. 

“ Chut ! I did nothing,” she said, rapidly. “ I only 
rode fast.” 

The frenzied hurrahs of the men who heard her drowned 
her words. They loved her for what she had done ; they 
loved her better still because she set no count on it. 

“ The Empire will think otherwise,” said the Major of 
the Zouaves. “ Tell me, my Little One, how did you do this 
thing ? ” 

Cigarette, balancing herself with a foot on either shoul- 
der of her supporters, gave the salute and answered : 

“ Simply, mon Commandant — very simply. I was alone, 
riding midway between you and the main army — three 
leagues, say, from each. I was all alone; only Vole-qui- 
veut flying with me for fun. I met a colon. I knew the 
man. For the matter of that, I did him once a service — 
saved, his geese and his fowls from burning, one winter’s 
day, in their house, while he wrung his hands and looked 
on. Well, he was full of terror, and told me there was 
fighting yonder — here he meant — so I rode nearer to see. 
That was just upon sunrise. I dismounted, and ran up a 
pa/m there.” And Cigarette pointed to a far-off slope 


444 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


crowned with the remains of a once-mighty palm forest 
“ I got up very high. I could see miles round. I saw how 
things were with you. For the moment I was coming 
straight to you. Then I thought I should do more service 
if I let the main army know, and brought you a reinforce- 
ment. I rode fast. Dieu ! I rode fast. My horse dropped 
under me twice ; but I reached them at last, and I went at 
once to the General. He guessed at a glance how things 
were, and I told him to give me my Spahis and let me go. 
So he did. I got on a mare of his own staff, and away we 
came. Ma foi ! it was a near thing. If we had been a 
minute later, it had been all up with you.” 

“ True indeed,” muttered the Zouave in his beard. “A 
superb action, my Little One. But did you meet no Arab 
scouts to stop you V' 

Cigarette laughed. 

“ Did I not ? Met them by dozens. Some had a shot at 
me ; some had a shot from me. One fellow nearly winged 
me ; but I got through them all somehow. Sapristi ! I 
galloped so fast I was very hard to hit flying. Those 
things only require a little judgment ; but some men, pardi ! 
always are creeping when they should fly, and always are 
scampering when they should saunter ; and then they won- 
der when they make fiasco ! Bah !” 

And Cigarette laughed again. Men were such bun- 
glers — ouf I 

“ Mademoiselle, if all soldiers were like you,” answered 
the Major of Zouaves, curtly, “to command a battalion 
would be paradise !” 

“All soldiers would do anything I have done,” retorted 
Cigarette, who never took a compliment at the expense of 
her “children.” “They do not all get the opportunity, 
look you ; c'est tout! Opportunity is a little angel ; some 
catch him as he goes, some let him pass by forever. You 
must be quick with him, for he is like an eel to wriggle 
away. If you want a good soldier, take that aristocrat of 
the Ghasse-Marais — that beau Victor. Poufl all his 
officers were down ; and how splendidly he led the troop ! 
He was going to die with them rather than surrender. 
Napoleon” — and Cigarette uncovered her curly head rev- 
erentially as at the name of a deity — “ Napoleon would 


THE LOVE OP TIIE AMAZON. 


445 


have given him his brigade ere this. If you had seen him 
kill the chief l” 

“ He will have justice done him, never fear. And for 
you — the Cross shall be on your breast, Cigarette, if I live 
over to-night to write my dispatches.” 

And the Chef de Bataillon saluted her once more, and 
turned away to view the carnage-strewn plain, and number 
the few who remained out of those who had been wakened 
by the clash of the Arab arms in the gray of the earliest 
dawn. 

Cigarette’s eyes flashed like sun playing on water, and 
her flushed cheeks grew scarlet. Since her infancy it had 
been her dream to have the Cross, to have the Grande 
Croix to lie above her little lion’s heart ; it had been the 
one longing, the one ambition, the one undying desire of 
her soul ; and lo ! she touched its realization ! 

The wild, frantic, tumultuous cheers and caresses of her 
soldiery, who could not triumph in her and triumph with 
her enough to satiate them, recalled her to the actual mo- 
ment. She sprang down from her elevation, and turned 
on them with a rebuke. “Ah ! you are making this fuss 
about me while hundreds of better soldiers than I lie yon- 
der. Let us look to them first ; we will play the fool after- 
ward.” 

And, though she had ridden fifty miles that day, if she 
had ridden one — though she had eaten nothing since sun- 
rise, and had only had one draught of bad water — though 
she was tired, and stiff, and bruised, and parched with 
thirst, Cigarette dashed off as lightly as a young goat to 
look for the wounded and the dying men who strewed the 
plain far and near. 

She remembered one whom she had not seen after that 
first moment in which she had given the word to the squad- 
rons to charge. 

It was a terrible sight — the arid plain, lying in the scar- 
let glow of sunset, covered with dead bodies, with muti- 
lated limbs, with horses gasping and writhing, with men 
raving like mad creatures in the torture of their wounds. 
It was a sight which always went to her heart. She was a 
true soldier, and, though she could deal death uitilessly, 

38 


446 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


could, when the delirium of war was over, tend and yield 
infinite compassion to those who were in suffering. But 
such scenes had been familiar to her from the earliest years 
when, on an infant’s limbs, she had toddled over such bat- 
tle-fields, and wound tiny hands in the hair of some dead 
trooper who had given her sweetmeats the hour before, 
vainly trying to awaken him. And she went through all 
the intense misery and desolation of the scene now without 
shrinking, and with that fearless tender devotion to the 
wounded which Cigarette showed in common with other 
soldiers of her nation, being, like them, a young lion in the 
combat, but a creature unspeakably gentle and full of sym- 
pathy when the fury of the fight was over. 

She had seen great slaughter often enough, but even she 
had not seen any struggle more close, more murderous, 
than this had been. The dead lay by hundreds ; French and 
Arab locked in one another’s limbs as they had fallen when 
the ordinary mode of warfare had failed to satiate their 
violence, and they had wrestled together like wolves fight- 
ing and rending each other over a disputed carcass. The 
bitterness and the hatred of the contest were shown in the 
fact that there were very few merely wounded or disabled ; 
almost all of the numbers that strewed the plain were dead. 
It had been a battle-royal, and, but for her arrival with the 
fresh squadrons, not one among her countrymen would 
have lived to tell the story of this terrible duello which 
had been as magnificent in heroism as any Austerlitz or 
Gemappes, but which would pass unhonored, almost un- 
named, among the futile fruitless heroisms of Algerian 
warfare. 

“ Is he killed ? Is he killed ?” she thought, as she bent 
over each knot of motionless bodies where here and there 
some faint stifled breath or some moan of agony told that 
life still lingered beneath the huddled stiffening heap. And 
a tightness came at her heart, an aching fear made her 
shrink, as she raised each hidden face that she had never 
known before. “ What if he be ?” she said fiercely to her- 
self. “It is nothing to me. I hate him, the cold aristo- 
crat. I ought to be glad if I see him lie here. ,r 

But, despite her hatred for him, she could not banish 
that hot feverish hope, that cold suffocating fear, which, 


THE LOVE OP THE AMAZON. 44 ? 

turn by turn, quickened and slackened the bright flow of 
her warm young blood as she searched among the slain. 

“Ah ! le pauvre Picpon 1” she said, softly, as she reached 
at last the place where the young Chasseur lay, and lifted 
the black curls off his forehead. The hoofs of the charg- 
ing cavalry had cruelly struck and trampled his frame ; the 
back had been broken, and the body had been mashed as 
in a mortar under the thundering gallop of the Horse ; but 
the face was still uninjured, and had a strange pathetic 
beauty, a calm and smiling courage on it. It was ashen 
pale ; but the great black eyes that had glistened in such 
malicious mirth, and sparkled in such malignant mischief 
during life, were open, and had a mournful pitiful serenity 
in their look as if from their depths the soul still gazed — • 
that soul which had been neglected and cursed, and left to 
wander among evil ways, yet which, through all its dark- 
ness, all its ignorance, had reached, unguided, to love and 
to nobility. 

Cigarette closed their long black lashes down on the 
white cheeks with soft and reverent touch; she had seen 
that look ere now on the upturned faces of the dead who 
had strewn the barricades of Paris, with the words of the 
Marseillaise the last upon their lips. 

To her there could be no fate fairer, no glory more 
glorious, than this of his — to die for France. And she 
laid him gently down, and left him, and went on with her 
quest. 

It was here that she had lost sight of Cecil as they had 
charged together, and her mare, enraged and intoxicated 
with noise and terror, had torn away at a full speed that 
had outstripped even the swiftest of her Spahis. A little 
farther on a dog’s moan caught her ear; she turned and 
looked across. Upright, among a ghastly pile of men and 
chargers, sat the small snowy poodle of the Chasseurs, 
beating the air with its little paws as it had been taught 
to do when it needed anything, and howling piteously as 
it begged. 

“Flick-Flack? What is it, Flick-Flack?” she cried to 
him, while, with a bound, she reached the spot. The dog 
leaped on her rejoicing. The dead were thick there — ten 
or twelve deep — French trooper and Bedouin rider flung 


448 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


across each other, horribly entangled with the limbs, the 
manes, the shattered bodies of their own horses. Among 
them she saw the face she sought as the dog eagerly ran 
back, caressing the hair of a soldier who lay underneath 
the weight of his gray charger, that had been killed by a 
musket-ball. 

Cigarette grew very pale, as she had never grown when 
the hail-storm of shots had been pouring on her in the 
midst of a battle ; but, with the rapid skill and strength 
she had acquired long before, she reached the place, lifted 
aside first one, then another, of the lifeless Arabs that had 
fallen above him, and drew out from beneath the suffocat- 
ing pressure of his horse’s weight the head and the frame 
of the Chasseur whom Flick-Flack had sought out and 
guarded. 

For a moment she thought him dead ; then, as she drew 
him out where the cooled breeze of the declining day could 
reach him, a slow breath, painfully drawn, moved his chest ; 
she saw that he was unconscious from the stifling oppres- 
sion under which he had been buried since the noon ; an 
hour more without the touch of fresher air, and life would 
have been extinct. 

Cigarette had with her the flask of brandy that she 
always brought on such errands as these ; she forced the 
end between his lips, and poured some down his throat ; 
her hand shook slightly as she did so, a weakness the gal- 
lant little campaigner never before then had known. 

It revived him in a degree; he breathed more freely, 
though heavily, and with difficulty still ; but gradually the 
deadly leaden color of his face was replaced by the hue of 
life, and his heart began to beat more loudly. Conscious- 
ness did not return to him ; he lay motionless and sense- 
less, with his head resting on her lap, and with Flick-Flack, 
in eager affection, licking his hands and his hair. 

“He was as good as dead, Flick-Flack, if it had not 
been for you and me,” said Cigarette, while she wetted his 
lips with more brandy. “Ah bah ! and he would be more 
grateful, Flick-Flack, for a scornful scoff from Miladi I” 

Still, though she thought this, she let his head lie on her 
lap, and, as she looked down on him, there was the glisten 
as of tears in the brave sunny eyes of the little Friend of 
the Flag. 


THE LOYE OP THE AMAZON. 


449 


11 11 est si beau , si beau, si beau!” she muttered in her 
teeth, drawing the silk-like lock of his hair through her 
hands, and looking at the stricken strength, the powerless 
limbs, the bare chest, cut and bruised, and heaved pain- 
fully by each uneasy breath. She was of a vivid, voluptu- 
ous, artistic nature ; she was thoroughly woman-like in her 
passions and her instincts, though she so fiercely con- 
temned womanhood. If he had not been beautiful, she 
would never have looked twice at him, never once have 
pitied his fate. 

And he was beautiful still, though his hair was heavy 
with dew and dust, though his face was scorched with 
powder, though his eyes were closed as with the leaden 
weight of death, and his beard was covered with the red 
stain of blood that had flowed from the lance-wound on 
his shoulder. 

He was not dead ; he was not even in peril of death. 
She knew enough of medical lore to know that it was but 
the insensibility of exhaustion and suffocation : and she 
did not care that he should waken. She drooped her 
head over him, moving her hand softly among the masses 
of his curls, and watchiug the quickening beatings of his 
heart under the bare strong nerves. Her face grew tender, 
and warm, and eager, and melting with a marvelous 
change of passionate hues. She had all the ardor of south- 
ern blood ; without a wish he had wakened in her a love 
that grew daily and hourly, though she would not acknowl- 
edge it. She loved to see him lie there as though he were 
asleep, to cheat herself into the fancy that she watched his 
rest to wake it with a kiss on his lips. In that uncon- 
sciousness, in that abandonment, he seemed wholly her 
own ; passion which she could not have analyzed made 
her bend above him with a half-fierce, half-dreamy delight 
in that solitary possession of his beauty, of his life. 

The restless movements of little Flick-Flack detached a 
piece of twine passed round his favorite’s throat; the glit- 
ter of gold arrested Cigarette’s eyes. She caught what 
the poodle’s impatient caress had broken from the string; 
it was a small blue enamel medallion bonbon-box, with a 
hole through it by which it had been slung — a tiny toy 
once costly, now tarnished, for it had been carried through 
2 D 38* 


450 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


many rough scenes and many years of hardship, had been 
bent by blows struck at the breast against which it rested, 
and was clotted now with blood. Inside it was a woman’s 
ring, of sapphires and opals. 

She looked at both close in the glow of the setting sun ; 
then passed the string through and fastened the box afresh. 
It was a mere trifle, but it sufficed to banish her dream, to 
arouse her to contemptuous impatient bitterness with that 
new weakness that had for the hour broken her down to 
the level of this feverish folly. He was beautiful — yes ! 
She could not bring herself to hate him; she could not 
help the brimming tears blinding her eyes when she looked 
at him stretched senseless thus. But he was wedded to 
his past; that toy in his breast, whatever it might be, what- 
ever tale might cling to it, was sweeter to him than her 
lips would ever be. Bah ! there were better men than he; 
why had she not let him lie and die as he might under the 
pile of dead ? 

Bah 1 she could have killed herself for her folly ! She, 
who had scores of lovers, from princes to piou-pious, and 
never had a heart-ache for one of them, to go and care for 
a silent “ ci-devant ,” who had never even noticed that her 
eyes had any brightness or her face had any charm ! 

“ You deserve to be shot — you 1” said Cigarette, fiercely 
abusing herself as she put his head off her lap, and rose 
abruptly and shouted to a Tringlo who was at some dis- 
tance searching for the wounded. “Here is a Chasse- 
Marais with some breath in him,” she said, curtly, as the 
man with his mule-cart and its sad burden of half-dead, 
moaning, writhing frames drew near at her summons. 
“ Put him in. Soldiers cost too much training, to waste 
them on jackals and kites, if one can help it. Lift him up 
• — quick ! ” 

“ He is badly hurt?” said the Tringlo. 

She shrugged her shoulders. 

“ Oh, no ! I have had worse scratches myself. The 
horse fell on him, that was the mischief. Most of them 
here have swallowed the * petite pilule <VoubW once and 
for all. I never saw a prettier thing — every Lascar has 
killed his own little knot of Arbicos. Look how nice and 
neat they lie.” 


THE LOVE OF THE AMAZON. 


451 


Cigarette glanced over the field with the satisfied appre- 
ciation of a dilletante glancing over a Soltikoff or Blacas 
collection unimpeachable for accuracy and arrangement ; 
and drank a toss of her brandy, and lighted her little am- 
ber pipe, and sang loudly as she did so the gayest ballad 
of the Langue Yerte. 

She was not going to have him imagine she cared for 
that Chasseur whom he lifted up on his little wagon with 
so kindly a care — not she ! Cigarette was as proud in her 
way as was ever the Princess Yenetia Corona. 

Nevertheless, she kept pace with the mules, carrying 
little Flick-Flack, and never paused on her way, though 
she passed scores of dead Arabs, whose silver ornaments 
and silk broideries, commonly after such a fantasia, replen- 
ished the knapsack and adorned in profusion the uniform 
of the young filibuster, being gleaned by her, right and 
left, as her lawful harvest after the fray. 

“ Leave him there. I will have a look at him,” she 
said, at the first empty tent they reached. The camp had 
been the scene of as fierce a struggle as the part of the plain 
which the cavalry had held, and it was strewn with the 
slaughter of Zouaves and Tirailleurs. The Tringlo obeyed 
her, and went about his errand of mercy. Cigarette, 
left alone with the wounded man, lying insensible still on a 
heap of forage, ceased her song, and grew very quiet. She 
had a certain surgical skill, learnt as her untutored genius 
learned most things, with marvelous rapidity, by observa- 
tion and intuition ; and she had saved many a life by her 
knowledge and her patient attendance on the sufferers — 
patience that she had been famed for when she had been 
only six years old, and a surgeon of the Algerian regiments 
had affirmed that he could trust her to be as wakeful, as 
watchful, and as sure to obey his directions as though she 
were a Sceur de Charity. Now “the little fagot of oppo- 
sites,” as Cecil had called her, put this skill into active 
use. 

The tent had been a scullion’s tent ; the poor marmiton 
had been killed, and lay outside, with his head clean severed 
by an Arab flissa; his fire had gone out, but his brass pots 
and pans, his jar of fresh water, and his various prepara- 
tions for the General’s dinner were still there. The General 


452 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


was dead also; far yonder, where he had fallen in the van 
of his Zouaves, exposing himself with all the splendid 
reckless gallantry of France ; and the soup stood unserved, 
the wild plovers were taken by Flick-Flack, the empty 
dishes waited for the viands which there were no hands to 
prepare and no mouths to eat. Cigarette glanced round, 
and saw all with one flash of her eyes; then she knelt 
down beside the heap of forage, and, for the first thing, 
dressed his wounds with the cold, clear water, and washed 
away the dust and the blood that covered liis breast. 

“ He is too good a soldier to die ; one must do it for 
France,” she said to her herself, in a kind of self-apology. 
And as she did it, and bound the lance-gash close, and 
bathed his breast, his forehead, his hair, his beard, free from 
the sand, and the powder, and the gore, a thousand changes 
swept over her mobile face. It was oue moment soft, and 
flushed, and tender as passion ; it was the next jealous, 
fiery, scornful, pale, and full of impatient self-disdain. 

He was nothing to her — morbleu ! He was an aristocrat, 
and she was a child of the people. She had been besieged 
by dukes, and had flouted princes ; she had borne herself 
in such gay liberty, such vivacious freedom, such proud and 
careless sovereignty — bah 1 what was it to her whether this 
man lived or died ? If she saved him, he would give her 
a low bow as he thanked her, thinking all the while of 
Miladi 1 

And yet she went on with her work. 

Cecil had been stunned by a stroke from his horse’s hoof 
as the poor beast fell beneath and rolled over him. His 
wounds were slight — marvelously so for the thousand 
strokes that had been aimed at him; but it was difficult to 
arouse him from unconsciousness, and his face was white as 
death where he lay on the heap of dry reeds and grasses. 
She began to feel fear of that lengthened syncope ; a chill, 
tight, despairing fear that she had never known in her life 
before. She knelt silent a moment, drawing through her 
hand the wet locks of his hair with the bright threads of 
gold gleaming in it. 

Then she started up, and, leaving him, found a match, 
and lighted the died-out wood afresh ; the fire soon blazed 
up, and she warmed above it the soup that had grown cold, 


THE LOVE OF THE AMAZON. 


453 


poured into it some red wine that was near, and forced some, 
little by little, down his throat. It was with difficulty at 
first that she could pass any through his tightly locked 
teeth ; but by degrees she succeeded, and, only half con- 
scious still, he drank it faster,, the heat and the strength 
reviving him as its stimulant warmed his veins. His eyes 
did not unclose, but he stirred, moved his limbs, and, with 
some muttered words she could not hear, drew a deeper 
breath and turned. 

“ He will sleep now — he is safe,” she thought to herself 
while she stood watching him with a curious conflict of 
pity, impatience, anger, and relief at war within her. 

Bah ! Why was she always doing good services to this 
man, who only cared for the blue serene eyes of a woman 
who would never give him aught except pain ? Why should 
she take such care to keep the fire of vitality alight in him, 
when it had been crushed out in thousands as good as he, 
who would have no notice save a hasty thrust into the earth, 
no funeral chant except the screech of the carrion-birds ? 

Cigarette had been too successful in her rebellion against 
all weakness, and was far too fiery a young warrior to find 
refuge or consolation in the poet’s plea, 

How is it under our control to love or not to love? 

To allow anything to gain ascendency over her that she 
resisted, to succumb to any conqueror that was unbidden 
and unwelcome, was a submission beyond words degrading 
to the fearless soldier-code of the Friend of the Flag. 
And yet — there she stayed and watched him. She took 
some food, for she had been fasting all day; then she 
dropped down before the fire she had lighted, and, in one 
of those soft, curled, kitten-like attitudes that were charac- 
teristic of her, kept her vigil over him. 

She was bruised, stiff, tired, longing like a tired child to 
fall asleep ; her eyes felt hot as flame, her rounded supple 
limbs were aching, her throat was sore with long thirst and 
the sand that she seemed to have swallowed till no draught 
of water or wine would take the scorched, dry pain out of 
it. But, as she had given up her fete-day in the hospital, 
so she sat now — as patient in the self-sacrifice as she was 
impatient when the vivacious agility of her young frame 


454 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


was longing for the frenzied delights of the dance or the 
battle. 

Yonder she knew, where her Spahis bivouacked on the 
hard-won field, there were riotous homages, wild applause, 
intoxicated triumph waiting for the Little One who had 
saved the day, if she chose to go out for it ; and she loved 
to be the center of such adoration and rejoicing with all 
the exultant vanity of a child and a hero in one. Here 
there were warmth of flames, quietness of rest, long hours 
for slumber, all that her burning eyes and throbbing nerves 
were longing for, as the sleep she would not yield to stole 
on her, and the racking pain of fatigue cramped her bones. 
But she would not go to the pleasure without, and she 
would not give way to the weariness that tortured her. 

Cigarette could crucify self with a generous courage, all 
the purer because it never occurred to her that there was 
anything of virtue or of sacrifice in it. She was acting en 
bon soldat — that was all. Pouf ! that wanted no thanks. 

Silence settled over the camp ; half the slain could not 
be buried, and the clear luminous stars rose on the ghastly 
plateau. All that were heard were the challenge of senti- 
nels, the tramp of patrols. The guard visited her once : 
“C’est Cigarette ” she said, briefly, and she was left undis- 
turbed. 

She kept herself awake in the little dark tent, only lit 
by the glow of the fire. Dead men were just without, and 
in the moonlight without, as the night came on, she could 
see the severed throat of the scullion, and the head farther 
olf, like a round gray stone. But that was nothing to 
Cigarette; dead men were no more to her than dead trees 
are to others. 

Every now and then, four or five times in an hour, she 
gave him whom she tended the soup or the wine that she 
kept warmed for him over the embers. He took it with- 
out knowledge, sunk half in lethargy, half in sleep ; but it 
kept the life glowing in him which, without it, might have 
perished of cold and exhaustion as the chills and northerly 
wind of the evening succeeded to the heat of the day, and 
pierced through the canvas walls of the tent. It was very 
bitter ; more keenly felt because of the previous burning of 
the sun. There was no cloak or covering to fliug over 


THE LOVE OP THE AMAZON. 


455 


him ; she took off her blue cloth tunic and threw it across 
his chest, and, shivering despite herself, curled closer to 
the little fire. 

She did not know why she did it — he was nothing to 
her — and yet she kept herself wide awake through the 
dark autumn night, lest he should sigh or stir and she not 
hear him. 

“I have saved his life twice,” she thought, looking at 
him ; “ beware of the third time, they say !” 

He moved restlessly, and she went to him. His face 
was flushed now ; his breath came rapidly and shortly ; 
there was some fever on him. The linen was displaced 
from his wounds ; she dipped it again in water, and laid 
the cooled bands on them. ‘‘Ah, bah! If I were not 
unsexed enough for this, how would it be with you now ?” 
she said in her teeth. He tossed wearily to and fro ; de- 
tached words caught her ear as he muttered them : 

“ Let it be, let it be — he is welcome ! How could I 
prove it at his cost ? I saved him — I could do that. It 
was not much ” 

She listened with intent anxiety to hear the other whis- 
pers ending the sentence, but they were stifled and broken. 

“Tiens!” she murmured below her breath. “It is for 
some other he has ruined himself.” 

She could not catch the words that followed. They 
were in an unknown language to her, for she knew nothing 
of English, and they poured fast and obscure from his lips 
as he moved in feverish unrest ; the wine that had saved 
him from exhaustion inflaming his brain in his sleep. How 
and then French phrases cro-ssed the English ones ; she 
leaned down to seize their meaning till her cheek was 
against his forehead, till her lips touched his hair ; and at 
that half caress her heart beat, her face flushed, her mouth 
trembled with a too vivid joy, with an impulse, half fear 
and half longing, that had never so moved her before. 

“ If I had my birthright,” he muttered in her own 
tongue. “ If 1 had it — would she look so cold then ? 
She might love me — women used once. 0, God 1 if she 
had not looked on me, I had never known all I have lost !” 

Cigarette started as if a knife had stabbed her, and 
sprang up from her rest beside him. 


456 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


" She — she — always she !” she muttered fiercely, while 
her face grew duskily scarlet in the fire-glow of the tent ; 
and she went slowly away, back to the low wood fire. 

This was to be ever her reward ! 

Her eyes glistened and flashed with the fiery vengeful 
passions of her hot and jealous instincts. Cigarette had 
in her the violence as she had the nobility of a grand 
nature that has gone wholly untutored and unguided ; and 
she had the power of southern vengeance in her, though 
she had also the swift and rapid impulse to forgiveness of 
a generous and sunlit temper. It was bitter, beyond any 
other bitterness that could have wounded her, for the 
spoilt, victorious, imperious, little empress of the Army of 
Algeria, to feel that, though she had given his life twice 
back to this man, she was less to him than the tiny white 
dog that nestled in his breast ; that she who never before 
had endured a slight, or known what neglect could mean, 
gave care, and pity, and aid, and even tenderness, to one 
whose only thought was for a woman who had accorded 
him nothing but a few chill syllables of haughty conde- 
scension 1 

He lay there unconscious of her presence, tossing wearily 
to and fro in fevered unrefreshing sleep, murmuring inco- 
herent words of French and English strangely mingled ; 
and Cigarette crouched ou the ground, with the firelight 
playing all over her picturesque, childlike beauty, and her 
large eyes strained and savage, yet with a strange mistful 
pain in them, looking out at the moonlight where the head- 
less body lay in a cold gray sea of shadow. 

Yet she did not leave him. 

She was too generous for that “What is right is right. 
He is a soldier of France,” she muttered, while she kept her 
vigil. She felt no want of sleep ; a hard hateful wakeful- 
ness seemed to have banished all rest from her; she stayed 
there all the night through. Whenever she could ease or 
aid him she rose and did so, with the touch of water on 
his forehead, or of cooled wine to Jiis lips, by the altera- 
tion of the linen on his wounds, or the shifting of the rough 
forage that made his bed. But she did it without anything 
of that loving lingering attendance she had given before ; 
she never once drew out the task longer than it needed, or 


THE LOVE OP THE AMAZON. 45T 

let her hands wander among his hair, or over his lips, as 
she had done before. 

And he never once was conscious of it ; he never once 
knew that she was near. He did not waken from the pain- 
ful, delirious, stupefied slumber that had fallen on him ; he 
only vaguely felt that he was suffering pain ; he only vaguely 
dreamed of what he murmured of — his past, and the beauty 
of the woman who had brought all the memories of that 
past back on him. 

And this was Cigarette’s reward — to hear him mutter 
wearily of the proud eyes and of the lost smile of an- 
other ! 

The dawn came at last ; her constant care and the skill 
with which she had cooled and dressed his wounds had 
done him infinite service ; the fever had subsided, and to- 
ward morning his incoherent words ceased, his breathing 
grew calmer and more trauquil ; he fell asleep — sleep that 
was profound, dreamless, and refreshing. 

She looked at him with a tempestuous shadow darkening 
her face that yet was soft with a tenderness that she could 
not banish. She hated him ; she ought to have stabbed 
or shot him rather than have tended him thus ; he neglected 
her, and only thought of that woman of his old Order. 
As a daughter of the People, as a child of the Army, as 
a soldier of France, she ought to have killed him rather 
than have caressed his hair and soothed his pain ! Pshaw I 
She ground one in another her tiny white teeth, that were 
like a spaniel’s. 

Then gently, very gently, lest she should waken him, she 
took her tunic skirt with which she had covered him from 
the chills of the night, put more broken wood on the 
fading fire, and with a last lingering look .at him where he 
slept, passed out from the tent as the sun rose in a flushed 
and beautiful dawn. He would never know that she had 
saved him thus : he never should know it, she vowed in 
her heart. 

Cigarette was very haughty in her own wayward, car*» 
less fashion. At a word of love from him, at a kiss frot* 
his lips, at a prayer from his voice, she would have given 
herself to him in all the abandonment of a first passion* 

39 


458 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and have gloried in being known as his mistress. But 
she would have perished by a thousand deaths rather than 
have sought him through his pity or through his grati- 
tude ; rather than have accepted the compassion of a heart 
that gave its warmth to another ; rather than have ever 
let him learn that he was any more to her than all their 
other countless comrades who filled up the hosts of Africa. 

“He will never know, ’’she said to herself, as she passed 
through the disordered camp, and in a distant quarter 
coiled herself among the hay of a forage-wagon, and 
covered up in dry grass, like a bird in a nest, let her tired 
limbs lie and her aching eyes close in repose. She was 
very tired ; and every now and then as she slept a quick 
sobbing breath shook her as she slumbered, like a worn-out 
fawn who has been wounded while it played. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 

THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 

With the reveille and the break of morning Cigarette 
woke, herself again; she gave a little petulaut shake to 
her fairy form when she thought of what folly she had 
been guilty. “Ah, bah I you deserve to be shot,” she said 
to herself afresh. “ One would think you were a Silver 
Pheasant — you grow such a little fool 1” 

Love was all very well, so Cigarette’s philosophy had 
always reckoned; a chocolate bonbon, a firework, a baga- 
telle, a draught of champagne, to flavor an idle moment. 
“ Vin et Venus ” she had always been accustomed to see 
worshiped together, as became their alliterative; it was 
a bit of fun — that was all. A passion that had pain in it 
had never touched the Little One ; she had disdained it 
with lightest, airiest contumely. “If your sweetmeat 
has a bitter almond iu it, eat the sugar and throw the 
almond away, you goose 1 that is simple enough, isn’t it ? ( 


THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 


459 


Bah ! I don’t pity the people who eat the bitter almond ; 
not I — ce sont bien betes, ces gens ! ” she had said once, 
when arguing with an officer on the absurdity of a melan- 
choly love that possessed him, and whose sadness she 
rallied most unmercifully. Now, for once in her young 
life, the Child of France found that it was remotely pos- 
sible to meet with almonds so bitter that the taste will 
remain and taint all things, do what philosophy may to 
throw its acridity aside. 

With the reveille she awoke, herself again, though she 
had not had more than an hour’s slumber — awoke, it is 
true, with a dull ache at her heart that was very new and 
bitterly unwelcome to her, but with the buoyant vivacity 
and the proud carelessness of her nature in arms against 
it, and with that gayetv of childhood inherent to her re- 
pelling, and very nearly successfully, the foreign depression 
that weighed on it. 

Her first thought was to take care that he should never 
learn what she had done for him. The Princess Corona 
would not have more utterly disdained to solicit regard 
through making a claim upon gratitude than the fiery little 
warrior of France would have done. She went straight to 
the Tringlo who had known her at her mission of mercy. 

“ Georges, mon brave,” said the Little One, with that 
accent of authority which was as haughty as any General’s, 
“ do you know how that Chasseur is that we brought in 
last night ?” 

“Not heard, ma belle,” said the cheery little Tringlo, 
who was hard pressed ; for there was much to be done, 
and he was very busy. 

“ What is to be done with the wounded ?” 

Georges lifted his eyebrows : 

“ Ma belle 1 there are very few. There are hundreds of 
dead. It was a duel d outrance yesterday. The few there 
are we shall take with an escort of Spahis to headquarters.” 

“ Good. I will go with you. Have a heed, Georges, 
never to whisper that I had anything to do with saving that 
man I called to you about.” 

“And why, my Little One ?” 

“Because 1 desire you 1” said Cigarette, with her most 
imperious empliasis. “They say he is English, and a 


4G0 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ruined Milord, pardieu ! Now, I would not have an Eng- 
lishman think I sought his six feet of carcass worth saving 
for a ransom.” 

The Tringlo chuckled; he was an Anglophobist. In 
the Chinese expedition his share of “loot” had been robbed 
from him by a trick of which two English soldiers had 
been the concoctors, and a vehement animosity against the 
whole British race had been the fruit of it in him. 

“Non, non, non /” he answered her, heartily. “I under- 
stand. Thou art very right, Cigarette. If we have ever 
obliged an Englishman, he thinks his obligation to us opens 
him a neat little door through which to cheat us. It is 
very dangerous to oblige the English; they always hate 
you for it. That is their way. They may have virtues ; 
they may,” he added, dubiously, but with an impressive air 
of strictest impartiality, “but among them is not written 
gratitude. Ask that man, Rac, how they treat their sol- 
diers I” and M. Georges hurried away to his mules and his 
duties, thinking with loving regret of the delicious Chinese 
plunder of which the dogs of Albion had deprived him. 

“ He is safe !” thought Cigarette ; of the patrol who 
had seen her she was not afraid — he had nover noticed with 
whom she was when he had put his head into the scullion’s 
tent ; and she made her way toward the place where she 
had left him, to see how it went with this man whom she 
was so careful should never know that which he had owed 
to her. 

It went well with him, thanks to her ; care, and strength- 
ening nourishment, and the skill of her tendance had warded 
off all danger from his wound. The bruise and pressure 
from the weight of the horse had been more ominous, and 
he could not raise himself or even breathe without severe 
pain ; but his fever had left him, and he had just been lifted 
into a mule-drawn ambulance-wagon as Cigarette reached 
the spot. 

“ How goes the day, Monsieur Victor ? So you got 
sharp scratches, I hear ? Ah ! that was a splendid thing 
we had yesterday 1 When did you go down ? We charged 
together 1” she cried gayly to him ; then her voice dropped 
suddenly, with an indescribable sweetness and change of 
tone. “ So 1— you suffer still ?” she asked, softly. 


THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 


461 


Coming close up to where he lay on the straw, she saw 
the exhausted languor of his regard, the heavy darkness 
under his eyelids, the effort with which his lips moved as 
the faint words came broken through them. 

“Not very much, ma belle , I thank you. I shall be fit 
for harness in a day or two. Do not let them send me into 
hospital. I shall be perfectly — well — soon.” 

Cigarette swayed herself upon the wheel and leaned to- 
ward him, touching and changing his bandages with clever 
hands : 

“They have dressed your wound ill; whose doing is 
that ?” 

“ It is nothing. I have been half cut to pieces before 
now ; this is a mere bagatelle. It is only ” 

“ That it hurts you to breathe ? I know 1 Have they 
given you anything to eat this morning ?” 

“No. Everything is in confusion. We ” 

She did not stay for the conclusion of his sentence ; she 
had darted off, quick as a swallow. She knew what she 
had left in her dead scullion’s tent. Everything was in 
confusion, as he had said. Of the few hundreds that had 
been left after the terrific onslaught of the past day, some 
were employed far out, thrusting their own dead into the 
soil ; others were removing the tents and all the equipage 
of the camp ; others were busied with the wounded, of 
whom the greatest sufferers were to be borne to the nearest 
hospital (that nearest many leagues away over the wild and 
barren country) ; while those who were likely to be again 
soon ready for service were to be escorted to the head- 
quarters of the main army. Among the latter Cecil had 
passionately entreated to be numbered ; his prayer was 
granted to the man who had kept at the head of his Chas- 
seurs and borne aloft the Tricolor through the whole of 
the war-tempest on which the dawn had risen, and which 
had barely lulled and sunk by the setting of the sun. Ch&- 
teauroy was away with the other five of his squadrons ; 
and the Zouave chef-de-bataillon, the only officer of any 
rank who had come alive through the conflict, had himself 
visited Bertie, and given him warm words of eulogy, and 
even of gratitude, that had soldierly sincerity and cordiality 
in them. 


39 * 


462 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Your conduct was magnificent,” he had said, as he had 
turned away. “ It shall be my care that it is duly reported 
and rewarded.” 

Cigarette was but a few seconds absent ; she soon bounded 
back like the swift little chamois she was, bringing with 
her a huge bowlful of red wine with bread broken in it. 

“This is the best I could get,” she said; “it is better 
than nothing. It will strengthen you.” 

“ What have you had yourself, petite ?” 

“Ah- bah ! Leave off thinking for others ; I have break- 
fasted long ago,” she answered him. (She had only eaten 
a biscuit well-nigh as hard as a flint.) “ Take it — here, I 
will hold it for you.” 

She perched herself on the wheel like a bird on a twig ; 
she had a bird’s power of alighting and sustaining herself 
on the most difficult and most airy elevation ; but Cecil 
turned his eyes on the only soldier in the cart beside him- 
self, one of the worst men in his regiment — a murderous, 
sullen, black-browed, evil wretch, fitter for the bench of 
the convict-galley than for the ranks of the cavalry. 

“ Give half to Zackrist,” he said. “I know no hunger; 
and he has more need of it.” 

“ Zackrist ! that is the man who stole your lance and 
accouterments, and got you into trouble by taking them to 
pawn in your name, a year and more ago.” 

“ Well, what of that ? He is not the less hungry.” 

“What of that? Why, you were going to be turned 
into the First Battalion* disgraced for the affair, because 
you would not tell of him : if Vireflou had not found out 
the rights of the matter in time !” 

“ What has that to do with it ?” 

“This, Monsieur Victor, that you are a fool.” 

“ I dare say I am. But that does not make Zackrist 
less hungry.” 

He took the bowl from her hands, and emptying a little 
of it into the wooden bidon that hung to her belt, kept 
that for himself and stretching his arm across the straw, 


* The battalmn of the criminal outcasts of all corps, whether 
horse or foot- inswcring to the Straf bataillons of tho Austrian 
service. 


THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 


463 


gave the bowl to Zackrist, who had watched it with the 
longing ravenous eyes of a starving wolf, and seized it with 
rabid avidity. 

A smile passed over Cecil’s face, amused despite the 
pain he suffered. 

“ That is one of my ‘sensational tricks,’ as M. de Cha- 
teauroy calls them. Poor Zackrist ! did you see his eyes ?” 

“A jackal’s eyes, yesl” said Cigarette, who, between 
her admiration for the action and her impatience at the 
waste of her good bread and wine, hardly knew whether to 
applaud or to deride him. “What recompense do you 
think you will get ? He will steal your things again, first 
chance. ” 

“ May be. I don’t think he will. But he is very hungry 
all the same ; that is about the only question just now,” he 
answered her as he drank and ate his portion, with a need 
of it that could willingly have made him take thrice as 
much, though for the sake of Zackrist he had denied his 
want of it. 

The Zackrist himself, who could hear perfectly what was 
said, uttered no word ; but when he had finished the con- 
tents of the bowl, lay looking at his corporal with an odd 
gleam in the dark sullen savage depths of his hollow eyes. 
He was not going to say a word of thanks ; no 1 — none 
had ever heard a grateful or a decent word from him in his 
life ; he was proud of that. He was the most foul-mouthed 
brute in the army, and, like Snalce in the School for Scan- 
dal , thought a good action would have ruined his character 
forever. Nevertheless there came into his cunning and 
ferocious eyes a glisten of the same light which had been 
in the little gamin's when first by the bivouac fire he had 
murmured, “ Picpon s'en souviendra .” 

“When anybody stole from me,” muttered Cigarette, “X 
shot him.” 

“You would have fed him had he been starving. Ho 
not belie yourself, Cigarette ; you are too generous ever to 
be vindictive.” 

“Pooh! Revenge is one’s right.” 

“ I doubt that. We are none of us good enough to 
claim it, at any rate.” 

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders in silence ; then pois- 


464 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ing herself on the wheel, she sprang from thence on to the 
back of her little mare which she had brought up, having 
the reins in one of her hands and the wine-bowl in the 
oth£r, and was fresh and bright after the night’s repose. 

“ I will ride with you, with my Spahis,” she said, as a 
young queen might have promised protection from her 
escort. He thanked her, and sank back among the straw, 
exhausted and worn out with pain and with languor ; the 
weight that seemed to oppress his chest was almost as 
hard to bear as when the actual pressure of his dead 
charger’s body had been on him. 

Yet, as he had said, it was but a bagatelle beside the all 
but mortal wounds, the agonizing neuralgia, the prostra- 
ting fever, the torture of bullet-torn nerves, and the scorch- 
ing fire of inflamed sword-wounds that had in their turn 
been borne by him in his twelve years of African service — 
things which, to men who have never suffered them, sound 
like the romanced horrors of an exaggerated imagination ; 
yet things which are daily and quietly borne, by such sol- 
diers as the soldiers of the Algerian Army, as the natural 
accompaniments of a military life — borne, too, in brave 
simple unconscious heroism by men who know well that the 
only reward for it will be their own self-contentment at hav- 
ing been true to the traditions of their regiment. 

Four other troopers were placed on the straw beside him, 
and the mule carts with their mournful loads rolled slowly 
out of camp eastward toward the quarters of the main 
army ; the Spahis, glowing red against the sun, escorting 
them, with their darling in their midst, while from their 
deep chests they shouted war songs in Sabir with all the 
wild and riotous delight that the triumph of victory and 
the glow of bloodshed roused in those who combined in 
them the fire of France and the fanaticism of Islamism — 
an irresistible union. 

Though the nights were now cold, and before long even 
the advent of snow might be looked for, the days were hot 
and even scorching still. Cigarette and her Spahis took 
no heed of it ; they were desert born and bred ; and she 
was well-nigh invulnerable to heat as any little salamander. 
But, .although they were screened as well as they could be 
under an improvized awning, the wounded men suffered ter* 


THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 


465 

ribly. Gnats and mosquitoes and all the winged things of 
the African air tormented them, and tossing on the dry hoi 
straw they grew delirious, some falling asleep and murmur- 
ing incoherently, others lying with wide open eyes of half- 
senseless straining misery. Cigarette had known well how 
it would be with them ; she had accompanied such escorts 
many a time ; and ever and again when they halted she dis- 
mounted and came to them, and mixed wine with some 
water that she had slung a barrel of to her saddle, and 
gave it to them, and moved their bandages, and spoke to 
them with a soft caressing consolation that pacified them 
as if by some magic. She had led them like a young lion 
on to the slaughter in the past day ; she soothed them now 
with a gentleness that the gentlest daughter of the Church 
could not have surpassed. 

The way was long ; the road ill formed, leading for the 
most part across a sear and desolate country, with nothing 
to relieve its barrenness except long stretches of the great 
spear-headed reeds. At noon the heat was intense ; the 
little cavalcade halted for half an hour under the shade of 
some black towering rocks which broke the monotony of the 
district, and commenced a more hilly and more picturesque 
portion of the country. Cigarette came to the side of the 
temporary ambulance in which Cecil was placed. He was 
asleep — sleeping for once peacefully with little trace of pain 
upon his features, as he had slept the previous night. She 
saw that his face and chest had not been touched by the 
stinging insect-swarm ; he was doubly screened by a shirt 
hung above him dextrously on some bent sticks. 

“ Who has done that ?” thought Cigarette. As she 
glanced round she saw : — without any linen to cover him, 
Zackrist had reared himself up and leaned slightly forward 
over against his comrade. The shirt that protected Cecil 
was his ; and on his own bare shoulders and mighty chest 
the tiny armies of the flies and gnats were fastened, doing 
their will uninterrupted. 

As he caught her glance, a sullen ruddy glow of shame 
shone through the black hard skin of his sun-burnt visage — 
shame to which he had been never touched when discov- 
ered in any one of his guilty and barbarous actions. 

“ Dame I” he growled, savagely j “ he gave me his wine; 

2 E 


466 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


*>ne must do something in return. Not that I feel the insects 
— not I ; my skin is leather, see you ! they can’t get 
through it; but his is une peau de femme — white and 
joft — bah ! like tissue-paper 1” 

“I see, Zackrist; you are right. A French soldier can 
lever take a kindness from an English fellow without out- 
running him in generosity. Look — here is some drink for 
you.” 

She knew too well the strange nature with which she had 
to deal to say a syllable of praise to him for his self-devo- 
tion, or to appear to see that, despite his boast of his 
leather skin, the stings of the cruel winged tribes were 
drawing his blood and causing him alike pain and irritation 
which, under that sun, and added to the torment of his 
gunshot-wound, were a martyrdom as great as the noblest 
waint ever endured. 

“Tiens — tiens! I did him wrong,” murmured Cigarette. 
11 That is what they are — the children of France — even 
when they are at their worst, like that devil, Zackrist. 
Who dare say they are not the heroes of the world ?” 

And all through the march she gave Zackrist a double 
portion of her water dashed with red wine, that was so 
welcome and so precious to the parched and aching throats ; 
Mid all through the march Cecil lay asleep, and the man 
who had thieved from him, the man whose soul was stained 
with murder, and pillage, and rapine, sat erect beside him, 
letting the insects suck his veins and pierce his flesh. 

It was only when they drew near the camp of the main 
army that Zackrist beat off the swarm and drew his old 
shirt over his head. “ 5Tou do not want to say anything to 
him,” he muttered to Cigarette. “I am of leather, you 
k-now; I have not felt it.” 

She nodded; she understood him. Yet his shoulders 
and his chest were well-nigh flayed, despite the tough and 
horny skin of which he made his boast. 

“ Dieu ! we are droll 1” mused Cigarette. “ If we do a 
good thing, we hide it as if it were a bit of stolen meat, 
we are so afraid it should be found out; but, if they do one 
in the world there, they bray it at the tops of their voices 
from the houses’ roofs, and run all down the streets scream- 
ing about it for fear it should be lost. Dieu ! we are droll !’* 


THE LEATHERN ZACKRIST. 


467 


And she dashed the spurs iDto her mare and galloped 
off at the height of her speed into camp — a very city of 
canvas, buzzing with the hum of life, regulated with the 
marvelous skill and precision of French warfare, yet with 
the carelessness and the picturesqueness of the desert-life 
pervading it. 

“C'est la Cigarette /” ran from mouth to mouth as the 
bay mare with her little Amazon rider, followed by the 
scarlet cloud of the Spain's, all a blaze like poppies in the 
sun, rose in sight, thrown out against the azure of the skies. 

What she had done had been told long before by an or- 
derly, riding hard in the early night to take the news of the 
battle ; and the whole host was on watch for its darling — 
the savior of the honor of France. Like wave rushing on 
wave of some tempestuous ocean, the men swept out to 
meet her in one great surging tide of life, impetuous, pas- 
sionate, idolatrous, exultant, with all the vivid ardor, all 
the uncontrolled emotion, of natures south-born, sun-nur- 
tured. They broke away from their mid-day rest as from 
their military toil, moved as by one swift breath of fire, and 
flung themselves out to meet her, the chorus of a thousand 
voices ringing in deafening vivas to the skies. She wa& 
enveloped in that vast sea of eager furious lives, in that 
dizzy tumult of vociferous cries, and stretching hands, aud 
upturned faces. As her soldiers had done the uight before, 
so these did now — kissing her hands, her dress, her feet, 
sending her name in thunder through the sunlit air, lifting 
her from off her horse, and bearing her, in a score of stal- 
wart arms, triumphant in their midst. 

She was theirs — their own — the Child of the Army, the 
Little One whose voice above their dying brethren had the 
sweetness of an angel’s song, and whose feet, in their hours 
of revelry, flew like the swift and dazzling flight of gold- 
winged orioles. And she had saved the honor of their 
Eagles ; she had given to them and to France their god of 
Victory. They loved her — oh, God, how they loved her 1 
— with that intense, breathless, intoxicating love of a mul- 
titude which, though it may stone to-morrow what it adore 
to-day, has yet for those on whom it has once been given 
thus a power no other love can know — a passion unutter- 
ably sad, deliriously strong. 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


That passion moved her strangely. 

As she looked down upon them, she knew that not one 
man breathed among that tumultuous mass but would 
have died that moment at her word ; not one mouth moved 
among that countless host but breathed her name in pride, 
and love, and honor. 

She might be a careless young coquette, a lawless little 
brigand, a child of suDny caprices, an elf of dauntless mis- 
chief; but she was more than these. The divine fire of 
genius had touched her, and Cigarette would have per- 
ished for her country not less surely than Jeanne d’Are. 
The holiness of an impersonal love, the glow of an imper- 
ishable patriotism, the melancholy of a passionate pity for 
the concrete and unnumbered sufferings of the people were 
in her, instinctive and inborn, as fragrance in the heart of 
flowers. And all these together moved her now, and made 
her young face beautiful as she looked down upon the 
crowding soldiery. 

“ It was nothing,” she answered them — “it was nothing. 
It was for France.” 

For France 1 They shouted back the beloved word with 
tenfold joy ; and the great sea of life beneath her tossed to 
and fro in stormy triumph, in frantic paradise of victory, 
ringing her name with that of France upon the air, in 
thunder-shouts like spears of steel smiting on shields of 
bronze. 

But she stretched her hand out, and swept it backward 
to the desert-border of the south with a gesture that had 
awe for them. 

“IlushJ” she said, softly, with an accent in her voice 
that hushed the riot of their rejoicing homage till it lulled 
like the lull in a storm. “ Give me no honor while (hey 
sleep yonder. With the dead lies the glory l” 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


469 


CHAPTER XXIX. 

BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 

Le Roi Gaillard qui s’appelle la Guerre, 

C’est mon souverain tout d<5bonnair ; 

Au bouche qui rit, au main qui tue, 

Au front d’airain, aux yeux de feu ! 

Comme il est beau ce roi si gai, 

Qui fait le diable a quatre au gr6, 

Qui brule, qui boit, qui foudre, qui fume, 

Qui aime le yin, le sang, l’ecume, 

Qui jette la torche . 

“Kola! nous v’la!” cried Cigarette, interrupting her* 
self in her chant in honor of the attributes of war, as the 
Tringlo’s mules which she was driving some three weeks 
after the fray of Zaraila, stopped, by sheer force of old 
habit, in the middle of a green plateau on the outskirts of 
a camp pitched in its center, and overlooked by brown 
rugged scarps of rock, with stunted 'bushes on their sum- 
mits, and with here and there a maritime pine clinging to 
their naked slopes. At sight of the food-laden little beasts, 
and the well-known form behind them, the Tirailleurs, In- 
digenes, and the Zouaves, on whose side of the encamp- 
ment she had approached, rushed toward her with frantic 
shouts, and wild delight, and vehement hurrahs in a tem- 
pest of vociferous welcome that might have stunned any 
ears less used, and startled any nerves less steeled, to mili- 
tary life than the Friend of the Flag’s. She signed back 
the shouting disorderly crowd with her mule-whip, as su- 
perbly as though she were a Marshal of France signing 
back a whole array’s mutiny. 

“What children you are! You push, and scramble, 
and tear, like a set of monkeys over a nut. Get out of ray 
way, or I swear you shall none of you have so much as a 
morsel of black bread — do you hear l” 

40 


470 


UNDER TWO FLAGS, 


It was amusing to see how they minded her contemptu- 
ous orders ; how these black-bearded fire-eaters, the terror 
of the country, each one of whom could have crushed her 
in his grasp as a wolf crushes a lamb, slunk back, silenced 
and obedient, before the imperious bidding of the little 
vivandiere. They had heeded her and let her rule over 
them almost as much when she had been seven years old, 
and her curls, now so dark, had been yellow as corn in the 
sun. 

“Ouf!” growled only one insubordinate, “if you had 
been a day and night eating nothing but a bit of moist 
clay, you might be hungry too, fanfanV' 

The humiliated supplication of the reply appeased their 
autocratic sovereign. She nodded her head in assent. 

“ I know ; I know. I have gone days ou a handful of 
barley-ears. M. le Colonel has his -marmitons, and his 
fricassees , and his balterie de cuisine where he camps — 
ho-he ! — but we soldiers have nothing but a hunch of baked 
chaff. Well, we win battles on it — eh? 1 Quand la pause 
est vide , Vepee mange vile!'” 

Which was one of the impromptu proverbs that Cigar- 
ette was wont to manufacture and bring into her discourse 
with an air of authority as of one who quotes from pro- 
found scholastic lore. It was received with a howl of 
applause and of ratification. The entrails often gnaw 
with bitter pangs of famine in the Army of Algiers, and 
they knew well how sharp an edge hunger gives to the 
steel. 

Nevertheless, the sullen angry roar of famished men, 
that is so closely, so terribly like the roar of wild beasts, 
did not cease. 

“ Where is Biribi ?” they growled. “ Biribi never keeps 
us waiting. Those are Biribi’s beasts.” 

“ Right,” said Cigarette, laconically, with a crack of 
her mule-whip on to the arm of a Zouave who was 
attempting to make free with her convoy and purloin a 
loaf off the load. 

“Where is Biribi, then?” they roared in concert, a 
crowd of eager, wolfish, ravenous, impatient men, hungry 
as camp fasting could make them, and half inclined even 
to tear their darliDg in pieces, since she kept them thus 
from the stores. 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 4tX 

Cigarette uncovered her head with a certain serious 
grace very rare in her. 

“ Biribi has made a good end.” 

Her assailants grew very quiet. 

“ Shot ?” they asked briefly. Biribi was a Tringlo well 
beloved in all the battalions. 

Cigarette nodded, with a gesture outward to the soli- 
tary country. She was accustomed to these incidents of 
war; she thought of them no more than a girl of civilized 
life thinks of the grouse or the partridges that are killed 
by her lovers and brothers. 

“ I was out yonder, two leagues or more away. I was 
riding; I was on my own horse; Etoile-Filante. Well, I 
heard shots ; of course I made for the place by my ear. 
Before I got up I saw what was the mischief. There 
were the mules in a gorge, and Biribi in front of them, 
fighting, mon Dieu ! — fighting like the devil — with three 
Arbis upon him. They were trying to stop the convoys, 
and Biribi was beating them back with all his might. I 
was too far off to do much good ; but I shouted and 
dashed down to them. The Arbis heard, Biribi heard ; he 
flew on to them like a tiger, that little Tringlo. It was 
wonderful ! Two fell dead under him ; the third took 
fright and fled. When I got up, Biribi lay above the 
dead brutes with a dozen wounds in him, if there were 
one. He looked up, and knew me. ‘ Is it thee, Cigar- 
ette he asked ; and he could hardly speak for the blood 
in his throat. 1 Do not wait with me ; I am dead already. 
Drive the mules into camp as quick as thou canst; the 
men will be thinking me late.’” 

“ Biribi was always bon enfant” muttered the listening 
throng ; they forgot their hunger as they heard. 

“All, chenapans / he thought more of you than you 
deserve, you jackals ! I drew him aside into a hole in the 
rocks out of the heat. He was dead ; he was right. No 
man could live slashed about like that. The Arbicos had 
set on him as he went singing along; if he would have 
given up the brutes and the stores, they would not have 
harmed him ; but that was not Biribi. I did all I could 
for him. Dame 1 it was no good. He lay very still for 
some minutes with his head on my lap; then he moved 


472 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


restlessly and tossed about. ‘ They will think me so late- * 
so late,’ he muttered; ‘and they are famished by thlj. 
There is that letter, too, from his mother for Petit-Pot-dc- 
Terre; there is all that news from France; I have so much 
for them, and I shall be so late — so late P All he thought 
was that he should be so late into camp. Well, it was all 
over very soon. I do not think he suffered ; but he was 
so afraid you should not have the food. I left him in the 
cave, and drove the mules on as he asked. Etoile-Filante 
had galloped away; have you seen him home?” 

There broke once more from the hearkening throng a 
roar that shook the echoes from the rocks ; but it was not 
now the rage of famished longing, but the rage of the lust 
for vengeance r and the grief of passionate hearts blent to- 
gether. Quick as the lightning flashes, their swords leaped 
from their scabbards and shook in the sun-lighted air. 

“We will avenge him I” they shouted as with one 
throat, the hoarse cry rolling down the valley like a swell 
of thunder. If the bonds of discipline had loosed them, 
they would have rushed forth on the search and to the 
slaughter, forgetful of hunger, of heat, of sun-stroke, of 
self-pity, of all things, save the dead Tringlo, whose only 
fear in death had been lest they should want and suffer 
through him. 

Their adjutants, alarmed by the tumult, hurried to the 
spot, fearing a bread-riot; for the camp was far from sup- 
plies, and had been ill victualed for several days. They 
asked rapidly what was the matter. 

“Biribi has been killed,” some soldier answered. 

“ Ah ! and the bread not come ?” 

“Yes, mon adjutant; the bread is there, and Cigarette 
too.” 

“ There is no need for me, then,” muttered the adjutant 
of Zouaves; “the Little One will keep order.” 

The Little One had before now quelled a mutiny with 
her pistol at the ringleader’s forehead, and her brave 
scornful words scourging the insubordinates for their dis- 
honor to their arms, for their treason to the tricolor ; and 
she was equal to the occasion now. She lifted her right 
hand : 

“We will avenge him. That is of course. The Flag 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


473 


of France never hangs idly when there is a brave life’s 
loss to be reckoned for; I shall know again the cur that 
fled. Trust to me, and now be silent. You bawl out 
your oath of vengeance, oh yes ! But you bawled as loud 
a minute ago for bread. Biribi loved you better than you 
deserved. You deserve nothing ; you are hounds ready 
to tear for offal to eat as to rend the foe of your dead 
friend. Bah !” 

The roar of the voices sank somewhat; Cigarette had 
sprung aloft on a gun-carriage, and as the sun shone on 
her face it was brilliant with the scorn that lashed them 
like whips. 

“ Sang de Dieu 1” fiercely swore a Zouave. “ Hounds, 
indeed 1 If it were any one but you ! When one has had 
nothing but a snatch of raw bullock’s meat, and a taste of 
coffee black with mud, for a week through, is one a hound 
because one hungers?” 

“No,” said the orator from her elevation, and her eyes 
softened wonderfully. In her heart she loved them so 
well, these wild barbaric warriors that she censured — “ no, 
one is not a hound because one hungers; but one is not a 
soldier if one complains. Well ! Biribi loved you; and I 
am here to do his will, to do his work. He came laden ; 
his back was loaded heavier than the mules’. To the front, 
all of you, as I name you ! Petit-Pot-de-Terre, there is 
your old mother’s letter. If she knew as much as I do 
about you, scapegrace, she would never trouble herself 
whether you were dead or alive 1 Fagotin ! here is a bun- 
dle of Paris newspapers for you; they are quite new — 
only nine months old ! Potele 1 some woman has sent 
you a love-scrawl and some tobacco ; I suppose she knew 
your passions all ended in smoke ! Rafle 1 here is a little 
money come for you from France ; it has not been stolen, 
so it will have no spice for you! Racoleurl here is a 
poulet* from some simpleton, with a knife as a souvenir; 
sharpen it on the Arbicos. Poupard, Loup-terrible, Jean 
Paguote, Pince-Maille, Louis Magot, Jules Goupil — here! 
There are your letters, your papers, your commissions. 


* Love-billet. 

40 * 


474 UNDER TWO FLAGS. 

JBIribi forgot nothing. As if you deserved to be worked 
lor or thought of, sacripans !” 

With which reproach, Cigarette relieved herself of the 
certain pain that was left on her by the death of Biribi ; 
she always found, that to work yourself into a passion with 
somebody is the very best way in the world to bauish an 
unwelcome emotion. 

The men summoned by their camp-sobriquets, which 
were so familiar that they had, many of them, fairly for- 
gotten their original names, rallied around her to receive the 
various packets with which a Tringlo is commonly charged 
by friends in the towns, or relatives away in France, for the 
soldiers of African brigades, and which, as well as his con- 
voy of food and his budget of news, render him so precious 
and so welcome an arrival at an encampment. The dead 
Biribi had been one of the lightest, brightest, cheeriest, 
and sauciest of the gay, kindly, industrious wanderers 
of his branch of the service ; always willing to lend ; 
always ready to help ; always smoking, singing, laugh- 
ing, chattering; treating his three mules as an indulgent 
mother her children ; calling them Plick, Plack, et Plock, 
and thinking of Plick, Plack, et Plock far beyond himself 
at all times; a merry, busy, smiling, tender-hearted soul, 
who was always happy, trudging along the sunburnt road, 
and caroling in his joyous voice chansonnettes and gaudri - 
oles to the African flocks and herds, amid the African 
solitudes. If there were a man they loved, it was Biribi ; 
Biribi, whose advent in camp had always been the signal 
tor such laughter, such abundance, such showers of news- 
papers, such quantities of intelligence from that France for 
tidings of which the hardest-featured veteran among them 
would ask with a pang at the heart, with a thrill in the 
words. And they had sworn, and would keep what they 
had sworn in bitter intensity, to avenge him to the utter- 
most point of vengeance. Yet five minutes afterward 
when the provisions Plick, Plack, et Plock had brought 
were divided and given out, they were shouting, eating, 
singing, devouring, with as eager a zest, and as hearty an 
enjoyment, as though Biribi were among them, and did 
not lie dead two leagues away, with a dozen wounds 
slashed on his stiffening frame. 

“ What heartless brutes 1 Are they always like that V » 


BY THE BIVOUAC EIRE. 


475 


muttered a gentleman painter who, traveling through the 
interior to get military sketches, had obtained permission 
to take up quarters in the camp. 

“If they were not like that they could not live a day,” 
a voice answered, curtly, behind him. “ Do you know 
what this service is, that you venture to judge them ? Men 
who meet death in the face every five minutes they breathe 
cannot afford the space for sentimentalism which those who 
saunter at ease and in safety can do. They laugh when we 
are dead, perhaps, but they are true as steel to us while 
we live ; — it is the reverse of the practice of the world 1” 

The tourist started, turned, and looked aghast at the 
man who had reproved him ; it was a Chasseur d’Afrique, 
who, having spoken, was already some way onward, mov- 
ing through the press and tumult of the camp to his own 
regiment’s portion of it. 

Cigarette, standing by to see that Plick, Plack, and 
Plock were properly baited on the greenest forage to be 
found, heard, and her eyes flashed with a deep delight. 

“ Dame 1” she thought, “ I could not have answered 
better myself! He is a true soldier, that.” And she for- 
gave Cecil all his sins to her with the quick, impetuous, 
generous pardon of her warm little Gallic heart. 

Cigarette believed that she could hate very bitterly ; 
indeed, her power of resentment she rated high among her 
grandest qualities. Had the little leopard been told that 
she could not resent to the death what offended her, she 
would have held herself most infamously insulted. Yet 
hate was, in truth, foreign to her frank, vivacious nature ; 
its deadliness never belonged to her, if its passion might ; 
and at a trait akin to her, at a flash of sympathetic spirit 
in the object of her displeasure, Cigarette changed from 
wrath to friendship with the true instinct of her little heart 
of gold. A heart which, though it had been tossed about 
on a sea of blood, and had never been graven with so much 
as one tender word or one moral principle from the teach- 
ings of any creature, was still gold, despite all, no matter 
the bruises and the stains and the furnace-heats that had 
done their best to harden it into bronze, to debase it into 
brass. 

The camp was large, and a splendid picture of color, 


476 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


movement, picturesque combination, and wonderful light 
and shadow, as the sun-glow died out and the fires were 
lighted ; for the nights were now intensely cold, cold with 
the cutting, icy, withering bise, and clear above as an Ant- 
arctic night, though the days were still hot and dry as 
flame. 

On the left were the Tirailleurs, the Zouaves, the Ze- 
phyrs ; on the right were the Cavalry and the Artillery ; in 
the center of all was the tent of the Chief. Everywhere, 
as. evening fell, the red warmth of fires rose ; the caldron 
of soup or of coffee simmered, gipsy-like, above ; the men 
lounged around, talking, laughing, cooking, story-telling at 
their pleasure ; after the semi-starvation of the last week, 
the abundance of stores that had come in with other Trin- 
glos besides poor Biribi, caused an universal hilarity. The 
glitter of accouterments, the contents of open knapsacks, 
the skins of animals just killed for the marmite, the boughs 
of pines broken for firewood, strewed the ground. Tethered 
horses, stands of arms, great drums and eagle-guidons, the 
looming darkness of huge cannon, the blackness, like drom- 
edaries couched, of caissons and ambulance-wagons, the 
whiteness of the canvas tents, the incessant movement as 
the crowds of soldiery stirred, and chattered, and worked, 
and sang — all these, on the green level of the plain, framed 
in by the towering masses of the rugged rocks, made a 
picture of marvelous effect and beauty. 

Cecil, looking at it, thought so ; though the harsh and 
bitter misery which he knew that glittering scene enfolded, 
and which he had suffered so many years himself — misery 
of hunger, of cold, of shot-wounds, of racking bodily pains 
— stole from it, in his eyes, that poetry and that picturesque 
brilliancy which it bore to the sight of the artist and the 
amateur. He knew the naked terrors of war, the agony, 
the travail, the icy chills, the sirocco heats, the grinding 
routine, the pitiless chastisements of its reality ; to those 
who do, it can no longer be a spectacle dressed in the 
splendid array of romance. It is a fearful tragedy and 
farce woven close one in another ; and its sole joy is in 
that blood-thirst which men so lustfully share with tho 
tiger, and yet shudder from when they have sated it. 

It was this knowledge of war, in its bitter and deadly 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


4YT 

truth, which had made him give the answer that had 
charmed Cigarette, to the casual visitor of the encamp- 
ment. 

He sat now, having recovered from the effects of the day 
of Zaraila, within a little distance of the fire at which his 
men were stewing some soup in the great simmering copper 
bowl. They had eaten nothing for nigh a week, except 
some mouldy bread, with the chance of a stray cat or a 
shot bird to flavor it. Hunger was a common thorn in 
Algerian warfare, since not even the matchless intendance 
*of France could regularly supply the troops across those 
interminable breadths of arid land, those sun-scorched 
plains, swept by Arab foragers. 

“ Beau Victor ! you took their parts well.” said a voice 
behind him, as Cigarette vaulted over a pile of knapsacks 
and stood in the glow of the fire, with a little pipe in her 
pretty rosebud mouth and' her cap set daintily on one side 
of her curls. 

He looked up, and smiled. 

“ Not so well as your own clever tongue would have 
done. Words are not my weapons.” 

“ No 1 You are as silent as the grave-commonly; but when 
you do speak, you speak well,” said the vivandicre-Demos- 
thenes, condescendingly. “ I hate silence myself ! Thoughts 
are very good grain, but if they are not whirled round, 
round, round, and winnowed and ground in the millstones 
of talk, they keep little, hard, useless kernels, that not a 
soul can digest.” 

With which metaphor Cigarette blew a cloud of smoke 
into the night air, looking the prettiest little genre picture 
in the ruddy firelight that ever was painted on such a back- 
ground of wavering shadow and undulating flame. 

“Will your allegory hold good, petite?” smiled Cecil, 
thinking but little of his answer or of his companion, of 
whose service to him he remained utterly ignorant. “ I 
fancy speech is the chaff most generally, little better. So, 
they talk of you for the Cross? No soldier evei^ of a 
surety, more greatly deserved it/” 

Her eyes gleamed with a luster like the African planets 
above her ; her face caught all the fire, the light, the illu- 
mination of the flames flashing near her. 


478 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


‘‘I did nothing,” she said, curtly. “Any man on the 
field would have done the same.” 

“ That is easy to say ; not so easy to prove. In all great 
events there may be the same strength, courage, and desire 
to act greatly in those who follow as in the one that leads ; 
but it is only in that one that there is also the daring to 
originate, the genius to seize aright the moment of action 
and of success.” 

Cigarette was a little hero ; she was, moreover, a little 
desperado ; but she was a child in years and a woman at 
heart, valiant and ruthless young soldier though she might 
be. She colored all over her mignonne face at the words 
of eulogy from this man whom she had told herself she 
hated : her eyes filled ; her lips trembled. 

“ It was nothing,” she said, softly, under her breath. 
“ I would die twenty deaths for France.” 

He looked at her, and for the hour understood her 
aright ; he saw that there was the love for her country and 
the power of sacrifice of a Viriathus or an Arminius in 
this gay-plumaged aud capricious little hawk of the desert. 

“You have a noble nature, Cigarette,” he said, with an 

earnest regard at her. “ My poor child, if only ” 

He paused. He was thinking what it was hard to say to 
her — if only the accidents of her life had been different, 
what beauty, grace, and genius might have been developed 
out of the untamed, untutored, inconsequent, but glorious 
nature of the child-warrior. 

As by a fate, unconsciously his pity embittered all the 
delight his praise had given, and this implied regret for 
her stung her as the rend of the spur a young Arab colt — . 
stung her inwardly into cruel wrath and pain ; outwardly 
into irony, devilry, and contemptuous retort. 

“Oh-he I Child, indeed 1 Was I a child the other day, 
my good fellow, when I saved your squadron from being 
cut to pieces like grass with a scythe ? As for nobility ? 
Poufl Not much of that in me. I love France — yes. 
A soldier always loves his country. She is so brave, too, 
and so fair, and so riante, and so gay. Not like your 
Albion — if it is yours — who is a great gobemouche stuffed 
full of cotton, steaming with fog, clutching gold with ono 
hand and the Bible with the other, that she may swell her 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


479 

money-bags, and seem a saint all the same ; never laughing, 
never learning, always growling, always shuffling, who is 
like this spider — look ! — a tiny body and huge hairy legs — 
pull her legs, the Colonies, off, and leave her little English 
body, all shriveled and shrunk alone, and I should like to 
know what size she would be then, and how she would 
manage to swell and to strut ?” 

Wherewith Cigarette tossed the spider into the air, with 
all the supreme disdain she could impel into that gesture. 
Cigarette, though she knew not her A, B, C, D, and could 
not have written her name to save her own life, had a cer- 
tain bright intelligence of her own that caught up political 
tidings, and grasped at public subjects with a skill educa- 
tion alone will not bestow. One way and another, she had 
heard most of the floating opinions of the day, and stored 
them up in her fertile brain as a bee stores honey into his 
hive by much as nature-given and unconscious an instinct 
as the bee’s own. 

Cecil listened amused. 

“You little Anglophobist 1 You have the tongue of,a 
Voltaire. ” 

“Voltaire?” questioned Cigarette. “Voltaire! Let 
me see. I know that name. He was the man who cham- 
pioned Calas ? who had a fowl in the pot for every poor 
wretch that passed his house ? who was taken to the Pan- 
theon by the people in the Revolution ?” 

“Yes. And the man whom the wise world pretends 
still to call without a heart or a God 1” 

“ Chut 1 He fed the poor, and freed the wronged. 
Better than pattering Paters, that 1” said Cigarette, who 
thought a midnight mass at Notre Dame or a Salutation 
at the Madeleine a pretty coup de theatre enough, but who 
had for all churches and creeds a serene contempt and a 
fierce disdain. “ Go to the grandams and the children 1” 
she would say, with a shrug of her shoulders, to a priest, 
whenever one in Algiers or Paris attempted to reclaim 
her ; and a son of the Order of Jesus, famed for' per- 
suasiveness and eloquence, had been fairly beaten once 
when, in the ardor of an African missionary, he had sought 
to argue with the little Bohemian of the Tricolor, and had 
had his logic rent in twain, and his rhetoric scattered like 


480 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


dust, under the merciless home-thrusts and the sarcastic 
artillery of Cigarette’s replies and inquiries. 

“Hola!” she cried, leaving Yoltaire for what took her 
fancy. “ We talk of Albion — there is one of her sons. I 
detest your country, but, ma foil I must confess she breeds 
uncommonly handsome men.” 

She was a dilettante in handsome men ; she nodded her 
head now to where, some yards off, at another of the camp- 
fires, stood, with some officers of the regiment, one of the 
tourists ; a very tall, very fair man, with a gallant bearing, 
and a tawny beard that glittered to gold in the light of the 
flames. 

Cecil’s glance followed Cigarette’s. With a great cry 
he sprang to his feet and stood entranced, gazing at the 
stranger. She saw the startled amaze, the longing love, 
the agony of recognition, in his eyes ; she saw the impulse 
in him to spring forward, and the shuddering effort with 
which the impulse was controlled. He turned to her 
almost fiercely : 

He must not see me ! Keep him away — away, for 
God’s sake !” 

He could not leave his men ; he was fettered there 
where his squadron was camped. He went as far as he 
could from the flame-light into the shadow, and thrust 
himself among the tethered horses. Cigarette asked no- 
thing ; comprehended at a glance with all the tact of 
her nation ; and sauntered forward to meet the officers of 
the regiment as they came up to the picket-fire with the 
yellow-haired English stranger. She knew how charming 
a picture there, with her hands lightly resting on her hips, 
and her bright face danced on by the ruddy fire-glow, she 
made : she knew she could hold thus the attention of a 
whole brigade. The eyes of the stranger lighted on her, 
and his voice laughed in mellow music to his companions 
and ciceroni . 

“Your intendance is perfect; your ambulance is per- 
fect your camp-cookery is perfect, messieurs ; and here 
you have even perfect beauty too ! Truly, campaigning 
must be pleasant work in Algeria !” 

Then he turned to her with compliments frank and gay, 
and full of a debonnair grace that made her doubt he could 
be of Albion. 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


481 


Retort was always ready to her ; and she kept the circle 
of officers in full laughter round the vidette-fire with a 
shower of repartee that would have made her fortune on 
the stage of the Chatelet or Folies Marigny. And every 
now and then her glance wandered to the shadow where 
the horses were tethered. 

Bah I why was she always doing him service ? She 
could not have told. “ Parcequ ’ f suit bien bete,” said 
Cigarette mentally, with a certain fiery contempt for her- 
self. 

Still she went on — and did it. 

It was a fantastic picture by the bright scarlet light of 
the camp-fire, with the Little One in her full glory of 
mirth and mischief, and her circle of officers laughing on 
her with admiring eyes; nearest her the towering height 
of the English stranger with the gleam of the flame in the 
waves of his leonine beard. 

From the darkness, where the scores of gray horses 
were tethered, Cecil’s eyes were riveted on it. There were 
none near to see him ; had there been, they would have 
6een an agony in his eyes that no physical misery, no 
torture of the battle-field, had brought there. His face 
was bloodless, and his gaze strained through the gleam on 
to the fire-lit group with a passionate intensity of yearn- 
ing; — he was well used to pain, well used to self-control, 
well used to self-restraint, but for the first time in his 
exile the bitterness of a struggle almost vanquished him. 
All the old love of his youth went out to this man, so 
near beside him, yet so hopelessly severed from him : look- 
ing on the face of his friend, a violence of longing shook 
him: “0 God, if I were dead!” he thought, “they might 
know then ” 

He would have died gladly to have had that familiar 
hand once more touch his; those familiar eyes once more 
look on him with the generous tender trust of old. 

His brain reeled, his thoughts grew blind, as he stood 
there among his horses with the stir and tumult of the 
bivouac about him. There was nothing simpler, nothing 
less strange, than that an English soldier should visit the 
Franco-Arab camp; but to him it seemed like the resur- 
rection of the dead. 

2 F 


41 


482 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Whether it was a brief moment, or an hour through, 
that the circle stood about the great black caldron that 
was swinging above the flames, he could not have told : to 
him it was an eternity. The echo of the mellow ringing 
tones that he knew so well came to him from the distance, 
till his heart seemed breaking with but one forbidden long- 
ing, to look once more in those brave eyes that made every 
coward and liar quail, and say only, “I was guiltless.” 

It is bitter to know those whom we love dead; but it i3 
more bitter to be as dead to those who, once having loved 
us, have sunk our memory deep beneath oblivion that is 
not the oblivion of the grave. 

Awhile, and the group broke up and was scattered, the 
English traveler throwing gold pieces by the score among 
the waiting troopers. li A bientot /” they called to Cigar- 
ette, who nodded farewell to them with a cigar in her 
mouth, and busied herself pouring some brandy into the 
old copper caldron in which some black coffee and muddy 
water, three parts sand, was boiling. A few moments 
later, and they were out of sight among the confusion, the 
crowds, and the flickering shadows of the camp. When 
they were quite gone, she came softly to him ; she could 
not see him well in the gloom, but she touched his hand. 

“ Dieu 1 how cold you are 1 He is gone.” 

He could not answer her to thank her, but he crushed 
in his the little warm brown palm. She felt a shiver shake 
his limbs. 

“Is he your enemy?” she asked. 

“No.” 

“ What then ?” 

“ The man I love best on earth.” 

“Ah!” She had felt a surprise she had not spoken 
that he should flee thus from any foe. “ He thinks you 
dead, then ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And must always think so ?” 

“ Yes.” He held her hand still, and his own wrung it 
hard — the grasp of comrade to comrade, not of man to 
woman. “ Child, you are bold, generous, pitiful ; for 
God’s sake, get me sent out of this camp to-night. I am 
powerless.” 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


483 


There was that in the accent which struck his listener to 
the heart. He was powerless, fettered hand and foot as 
though he were a prisoner; a night’s absence, and he 
would be shot as a deserter. He had grown accustomed 
to this rendering up of all his life to the rules of others; 
but now and then the galled spirit chafed, the netted stag 
strained at the bonds. 

“I will try,” said Cigarette, simply, without anything 
of her audacity or of her vanity in the answer. “ Go you 
to the fire; you arc cold.” 

“Are you sure he will not return?” 

“ Not he. They are gone to eat and drink ; I go with 
them. What is it you fear ?” 

“ My own weakness.” 

She was silent. She could just watch his features by 
the dim light, and she saw his mouth quiver under the 
fullness of his beard. He felt that if he looked again on 
the face of the man he loved he might be broken into self- 
pity, and unloose his silence, and shatter all the work of 
so many years. He had been strong where men of harder 
fiber and less ductile temper might have been feeble; but 
he never thought that he had been so; he only thought 
that he had acted on impulse, and had remained true to 
his act through the mere instinct of honor — an instinct in- 
born in his blood and his order — an instinct natural and 
unconscious with him as the instinct by which he drew his 
breath. 

“You are a fine soldier,” said Cigarette, musingly; 
“such men are not weak.” 

“ Why ? We are only strong as tigers are strong — just 
the strength of the talon and fang. I do not know. I 
was weak as water once ; I may be again, if — if ” 

He scarcely knew that he was speaking aloud ; he had 
forgotten her 1 His whole heart seemed burnt as with fire 
by the memory of that one face so familiar, so well loved, 
yet from which he must shrink as though some cowardly 
sin were between them. The wretchedness on him seemed 
more than he could bear; to know that this mau was so 
near that the sound of his voice raised could summon him, 
yet that he must remain as dead to him — remain as one 
dead after a craven and treacherous guilt. 


484 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


He turned suddenly, almost violently, upon Cigarette: 

“You have surprised my folly from me; you know ray 
secret so far ; but you are too brave to betray me, you are 
too generous to tell of this ? I can trust you to be silent ?” 

Her face flushed scarlet with astonished anger ; her 
little childlike form grew instinct with haughty and fiery 
dignity. 

“Monsieur, that question from one soldier of France to 
another .is insult. We are not dastards 1” 

There was a certain grave reproach that mingled with 
the indignant scorn of the answer, and showed that her 
own heart was wounded by the doubt, as well as her mili- 
tary pride by the aspersion. Even amid the conflict of pain 
at war in him he felt that, and hastened to soothe it. 

“ Forgive me, my child ; I should not have wronged you 
with the question. It is needless, I know. Men can trust 
you to the death, they say.” 

“ To the death — yes.” 

The answer was thoughtful, dreamy, almost sad, for 
Cigarette. His thoughts were too far from her in their 
tumult of awakened memories to note the tone as he went 
rapidly on : 

“ You have ingenuity, compassion, tact ; you have power 
here, too, in your way ; for the love of Heaven get me sent 
out on some duty before dawn ! There is Biribi’s murder 
to be avenged — would they give the errand to me ?” 

She thought a moment. 

“ We will see,” she said, curtly. “ I think I can do it. 
But go back, or you will be missed. I will come to you 
soon.” 

She left him then, rapidly, drawing her hand quickly out 
of the clasp of his. 

“ Que je suis bete! Que je suis bete!” said Cigarette 
to herself; for she felt her heart aching to its core for the 
sorrow of this man who was nothing to her. He did not 
know what she had done for him in his suffering and deli- 
rium ; .he did not know how she had watched him all that 
night through, when she was weary, and bruised, and 
thirsting for sleep ; he did not know ; he held her hand as 
one comrade another’s, and never looked to see if her eyes 
were blue or were black, were laughing or tear-laden. 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


485 


And yet she felt pain in his pain ; she was always giving 
her life to his service. “ Que je suis bete! Que je suis 
bete /” she murmured again. Many beside the little Friend 
of the Flag beat back as folly the noblest and purest thing 
in them. 

Cecil mechanically returned to the fire at which the men 
of his tribu were cooking their welcome supper, and sat 
down near them, rejecting, with a gesture, the most savory 
portion which, with their customary love and care for him, 
they were careful to select and bring to him. There had 
never been a time when they had found him fail to prefer 
them to himself, or fail to do them kindly service, if of 
such he had a chance ; and they returned it with all that 
rough and silent attachment that can be so strong and so 
stanch in lives that may be black with crime or red with 
slaughter. 

He sat like a man in a dream, while the loosened tongues 
of the men ran noisily on a hundred themes as they chaffed 
each other, exchanged a fire of bivouac jokes more racy 
than decorous, and gave themselves to the enjoyment of 
their rude meal, that had to them that savor which long 
hunger alone can give. Their voices came dull on his ear ; 
the ruddy warmth of th6 fire was obscured to his sight; 
the din, the laughter, the stir all over the great camp, at 
the hour of dinner were lost on him. He was insensible 
to everything except the innumerable memories that 
thronged upon him, and the aching longing that filled his 
heart with the sight of the friend of his youth. 

“ He said once that he would take my hand before all 
the world always, come what would,” he thought. “ Would 
he take it now, I wonder ? Yes ; he never believed against 
me.” 

And, as he thought, the same anguish of desire that had 
before smitten him to stand once more guiltless in the 
presence of men, and once more bear, untarnished, the 
name of his race and the honor of his fathers, shook him 
now as strong winds shake a tree that yet is fast rooted at 
its base, though it sway awhile beneath the storm. 

“ How weak I am 1” he thought, bitterly. “ What does 
it matter ? Life is so short, one is a coward indeed to fret 
over it. I cannot undo what I did. I cannot, if I would. 

41 * 


486 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Tg betray him now! God! not for a kingdom, if I had 
the chance ! Besides, she may live still ; and, even were 
she dead, to tarnish her name to clear my own would be a 
scoundrel’s baseness — baseness that would fail as it merited ; 
for who could be brought to believe me now ?” 

The thoughts unformed drifted through his mind, half 
dulled, half sharpened by the deadly pain, and the rush of 
old brotherly love that had arisen in him as he had seen 
the face of his friend beside the watch-fire of the French 
bivouac. It was hard; it was cruelly hard ; he had, after 
a long and severe conflict, brought himself into content- 
ment with his lot, and taught himself oblivion of the past, 
and interest in the present, by active duties and firm re- 
solve; he had vanquished all the habits, controlled most of 
the weakness, and banished nearly all the frailties and in- 
dulgences of his temperament in the long ordeal of African 
warfare. It was cruelly hard that now when he had ob- 
tained serenity, and more than half attained forgetfulness, 
these two — her face and his — must come before him, one 
to recall the past, the other to embitter the future ! 

As he sat with his head bent down and his forehead 
leaning on his arm, while the hard biscuit that served for 
a plate stood unnoticed beside him, with the food that the 
soldiers had placed on it, he did not hear Cigarette’s step 
till she touched him on the arm. Then he looked up ; her 
eyes were looking on him with a tender, earnest pity. 

“Hark! I have done it,” she said gently. “But it 
will be an errand very close to death, that you must go 
on ” 

He raised himself erect, eagerly. 

“ No matter that ! Ah, mademoiselle, how I thank 
you !” 

“ Chut ! I am no Paris demoiselle 1” said Cigarette, with 

a dash of her old acrimony. “ Ceremony in a camp . 

pouf! You must have been a court chamberlain once, 
weren’t you? Well, I have done it. Your officers were 
talking yonder of a delicate business ; they were uncertain 
who best to employ. I put in ray speech — it wras dead against 
military etiquette, but I did it— I said to M. le General : 
‘You want the best rider, the most silent tongue, and the 
surest steel in the squadrons ? Take Bel-a-faire-pear, then.* 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


487 


‘ Who is that V asked the general ; he would have sent out 
of camp anybody but Cigarette for the interruption. 1 Mon 
General,’ said I, ‘the Arabs asked that, too, the other day 
at Zaraila.’ ‘What!’ he cried, ‘the man Victor — who 
held the ground with his Chasseurs ? I know — a fine sol- 
dier. M. le Colonel, shall we send him ?’ The Black 
Hawk had scowled thunder on you ; he hates you more 
still since that affair of Zaraila, specially, because the 
general has reported your conduct with such praise that 
they cannot help but promote you. Well, he had looked 
thunder, but now he laughed. ‘ Yes, mon General,’ he 
answered him, ‘take him, if you like. It is fifty to one 
whoever goes on that business will not come back alive, 
and you will rid me of the most insolent fine gentleman in 
my squadrons.’ The general hardly heard him ; he was 
deep in thought ; but he asked a good deal about you from 
the Hawk, and Ch&teauroy spoke for your fitness for the 
errand they are going to send you on, very truthfully, for 
a wonder. I don’t know why; but he wants you to be 
sent, I think; most likely that you may be cut to pieces. 
And so they will send for you in a minute. I have done 
it as you wished, l le diable prends le fruit. 1 ” 

There was something of her old brusquerie and reckless- 
ness in the closing sentences ; but it had not her custom- 
ary debonnair lightness. She knew too well that the 
chances were as a hundred to one that he would never re- 
turn alive from this service on. which he had entreated to 
be dispatched. Cecil grasped both her hands in his with 
warm gratitude, that was still, like the touch of his hands, 
the gratitude of comrade to comrade, not of man to wo- 
man. 

“ God bless you, Cigarette 1 You are a true friend, my 
child. You have done me immeasurable benefits ” 

“Oh-he. I am a true friend,” said the Little One, some- 
thing pettishly. She would have preferred another epithet. 
“ If a man wants to get shot as a very great favor, I always 
let him pleasure himself. Give a man his own way, if you 
wish to be kind to him. You are children, all of you, 
nothing but children, and if the toy that pleases you best 
is death, why — you must have it. Nothing else would con- 
tent you. I know you. You always want what flies from 


488 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


you, and are tired of what lies to your hand. That is 
always a man.” 

“And a woman, too, is it not ?” 

Cigarette shrugged her shoulders. 

“ Oh, I dare say. We love what is new — what is strange. 
We are humming-tops ; we will only spin when we aro 
fresh wound up with a string to our liking.” 

“Make an exception of yourself, my child. You aro 
always ready to do a good action, and never tire of that. 
From my heart I thank you. I wish to Heaven I could 
prove it better.” 

She drew her hands away from him. 

“A great thing I have done, certainly ! Got you per- 
mission to go and throw a cartel at old King Death ; that 
is all 1 There! Loup-a-grifies-de-fer is coming to you. 
That is your summons.” 

The orderly so nicknamed approached, and brought the 
bidding of the general in command of the Cavalry for 
Cecil to render himself at once to his presence. These 
things brook no second’s delay in obedience ; he went with 
a quick adieu to Cigarette, and the little Friend of the 
Flag was left in his vacant place beside the fire. 

And there was a pang at her heart. 

“Ten to one he goes to his death,” she thought. But 
Cigarette, volage little mischief though she was, could 
reach very high in one thing ; she could reach a love that 
was unselfish, and one that was heroic. 

A few moments, and Cecil returned. 

“Rake,” he said rapidly, in the French he habitually 
used, “ saddle my horse and your own. I am allowed to 
choose one of you to accompany me.” 

Rake, in paradise, and the envied of every man in the 
squadrons, turned to his work — with him a task of scarce 
more than a second ; and Cecil approached his little Friend 
of the Flag. 

“ My child, I cannot attempt to thank you. But for you, 
I should have been tempted to send my lance through my 
own heart.” 

“Keep its lunge for the Arbicos, mon ami,” said Ci- 
garette brusquely — the more brusquely because that nSw and 
bitter pang was on her. “As for me, I want nothanks.” 


BY THE BIVOUAC FIRE. 


489 


“No; you are too generous. But not the less do I wish 
I could render them more worthily than by words. If I 
live, I will try ; if not, keep this in my memory. It is the 
only thing I have.” 

lie put into her hand the ring she had seen in the little 
bonbonnihre ; a ring of his mother’s that he had saved when 
he had parted with all else, and that he had put off his hand 
and into the box of Petite Heine’s gift the day he had en- 
tered the Algerian army. 

Cigarette flushed scarlet with passions he could not un- 
derstand, and she could not have disentangled. 

“The ring of your mistress ! Not for me, if I know it! 
Do you think I want to be paid ?” 

“The ring was my mother’s,” he answered her simply. 
'■‘And I offer it only en souvenir .” 

She lost all her hot color, and all her fiery wrath ; his 
grave and gentle courtesy always strangely stilled and re- 
buked her; but she raised the ring off the ground where 
she had flung it, and placed it back in his hand. 

“ If so, still less should you part with it. Keep it ; it will 
bring you happiness one day. As for me, I have done no- 
thing, pardieu!” 

“You have done what I value the more for that noble 
disclaimer. May I thank you thus, Little One ?” 

He stooped and kissed her; a kiss that the lips of a 
man will always give to the bright youthful lips of a woman, 
but a kiss, as she knew well, without passion, even without 
tenderness in it. 

With a sudden impetuous movement, with a shyness and 
a refusal that had never been in her before, she wrested 
herself from him, her face burning, her heart panting, and 
planged away from him into the depth of the shadow ; and 
he never sought to follow her, but threw himself into saddle 
as his gray was brought up : another instant, and, armed 
to the teeth, he rode out of the camp into the darkness of 
the silent, melancholy, lonely Arab night. 


490 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

SEUL AU MONDE. 

The errand on which he went was one, as he was well 
aware, from which it were a thousand chances to one that 
he ever issued alive. 

It was to reach a distant branch of the Army of Occu- 
pation with dispatches for the chief in command there, and 
to do this he had to pass through a fiercely hostile region, 
occupied by Arabs with whom no sort of peace had ever 
been made, the most savage as well as the most predatory 
of the wandering tribes. His knowledge of their tongue, 
and his friendship with some men of their nation, would 
avail him nothing here; for their fury against the Franks 
was intense, and it was said that all prisoners who had 
fallen into their hands had been put to death with merci- 
less barbarities. This might be true or untrue; wild tales 
were common among Algerian campaigners ; whichever it 
were, he thought little of it as he rode out on to the lonely 
plains. Every kind of hazardous adventure and every 
variety of peril had been familiar with him in this African 
life ; and now there were thoughts and memories on him 
which deadened every recollection of merely physical risk. 

“We must ride as hard and as fast as we can, and as 
silently ,” were the only words he exchanged with Rake, 
as he loosened his gray to a hand-gallop. 

“ All right, sir,” answered the trooper, whose warm blood 
was dancing, and whose blue eyes were alive like fire with 
delight. That he had been absent on a far-away foraging 
raid on the day of Zaraila had been nothing short of agony 
to Rake, and the choice made of him for this duty was to 
him a gift of paradise. He loved fighting for fighting’s 
sake ; and to be beside Cecil was the greatest happiness 
life held for him. 

They had two hundred miles to traverse, and had re- 


SEUL ATJ MONDE. 


491 


celved only the command he had passed on Rake, to ride 
“hard, fast, and silently.’ 7 To the hero of Zaraila the 
general had felt too much soldierly sympathy to add the 
superfluous injunction to do his uttermost to carry safely 
and successfully to their destination the papers that were 
placed in his sabertasche. They knew well that the errand 
would be done, or the Chasseur’s main de femme , mais 
main de fer, would be stiffened and nerveless in death. 

It was just nightfall; the after-glow had faded only 
a few moments before. Giving their horses, which they 
were to change once ten hours for the distance, and two 
tor bait and for rest, he reckoned that they would reach 
the camp before the noon of the coming day, as the beasts, 
fresh and fast in the camp, flew like greyhounds beneath 
them. 

Another night ride that they had ridden together came 
to the minds of both ; but they spoke not a word as they 
swept on, their sabers shaken loose in their sheaths, their 
lances well gripped, and the pistols with which they had 
been supplied sprung in their belts ready for instant action 
if a call should come for it. Every rood of the way was 
as full of unseen danger as if laid over mines. They might 
pass in safety ; they might any moment be cut down by ten 
score against two. From every hanging scarp of rugged 
rock a storm of musket-balls might pour ; from every screen 
of wild-fig foliage a shower of lances might whistle through 
the air ; from every darkling grove of fir-trees an Arab 
baud might spring and swoop on them ; — but the knowl- 
edge scarcely recurred to the one save to make him shake 
his sword more at loose for quick disengagement, and only 
made the sunny blue eyes of the other sparkle with a vivid 
and longing zest. 

The night grew very chill as it wore on ; the north wind 
rose, rushing against them with a force and icy touch that 
seemed to freeze their bones to the marrow after the heat 
of the day and the sun that had scorched them so long. 
There was no regular road ; they went across the country, 
their way sometimes leading over level land, over which 
they swept like lightning, great plains succeeding one 
auother with wearisome monotony ; sometimes, on the con- 
trary, lying through ravines, and defiles, and gloomy woods, 


492 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and broken hilly spaces, where rent bare rocks were thrown 
on one another in gigantic confusion, and the fantastic 
shapes of the wild fig and the dwarf palm gathered a 
hideous grotesqueness in the darkness. For there was no 
moon, and the stars were often hidden by the storm-rack 
of leaden clouds that drifted over the sky ; and the only 
sound they heard was the cry of the jackal, or the shriek 
of the night bird, . and now and then the sound of shallow 
water-courses, where the parched beds of hidden brooks 
had been filled by the autumnal rain. 

The first five and twenty miles passed without interrup- 
tion, and the horses laid well and warmly to their work. 
They halted to rest and bait the beasts in a rocky hollow, 
sheltered from the blasts of the bise, and green with short 
sweet grass, sprung up afresh after the summer drought. 

“ Do you ever think of him, sir V ’ said Rake, softly, with 
a lingering love in his voice, as he stroked the grays aud 
tethered them. 

“ Of whom V ’ 

“ Of the King, sir. If he’s alive, he’s gettin’ a rare old 
horse now.” 

“ Think of him ! I wish I did not, Rake. ” 

“ Wouldn’t you like to see him agen, sir ?” 

“ What folly to ask 1 You know ” 

“ Yes, sir, I know,” said Rake, slowly. “ And I know — . 
leastways I picked it out of a old paper — that your elder 
brother died, sir, like the old lord, and Mr. Berk.’s got 
the title.” f 

Rake had longed and pined for an opportunity to dare 
say this thing which he had learned, and which he could 
not tell whether or no Cecil knew likewise. His eyes 
looked with straining eagerness through the gloom into 
his master’s ; he was uncertain how his words would be 
taken. To his bitter disappointment, Cecil’s face showed 
no change, no wonder. 

“I have heard that,” he said, calmly — as calmly as 
though the news had no bearing on his fortunes, but was 
some stranger’s history. 

“Well, sir, but he ain’t the lord ?” pleaded Rake, pas- 
sionately. “ He won’t never be while you’re living, si r 1’* 

“ Oh yes, he is 1 I am dead, you know.” 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


49i* 


“But he won’t , sir 1^ reiterated Rake. “You’re Lord 
Royallieu if ever there was a Lord Royallieu, and if ever 
there will be one.” 

“ You mistake. An outlaw has no civil rights, and can 
claim none.” 

The man looked very wistfully at him ; all these years 
through he had never learned why his master was thus 
“ dead” in Africa, and he had too loyal a love and faith 
ever to ask, or ever to doubt but that Cecil was the wronged 
and not the wrong-doer. 

“You ain’t a outlaw, sir,” he muttered. “You could 
take the title if you would.” 

“ Oh no ! I left England under a criminal charge ; I 
should have to disprove that before I could inherit.” 

Rake crushed bitter oaths into muttered words as he 
heard. “You could disprove it, sir, of course, right and 
away, if you chose.” 

“ No ; or I should not have come here. Let us leave 
the subject. It was settled long ago. My brother is Lord 
Royallieu. I would not disturb him, if I had the power, 
and I have not it. Look, the horses are taking well to 
their feed.” 

Rake asked him no more : he had never had a harsh 
word from Cecil in their lives ; but he knew him too well 
for all that to venture to press on him a question thus 
firmly put aside. But his heart ached sorely for his master ; 
he would so gladly have seen “the king among his own 
again,” and would have striven for the restoration as 
strenuously as ever a Cavalier strove for the White Rose ; 
and he sat in silence, perplexed and ill satisfied, under the 
shelter of the rock, with the great, dim, desolate African 
landscape stretching before him, with here and there a 
gleam of light upon it when the wind swept the clouds 
apart. His volatile speech was chilled, and his buoyant 
spirits were checked. That Cecil was justly outlawed he 
would have thought it the foulest treason to believe for 
one instant; yet he felt that he might as soon seek to 
wrench up the great stones above him from their base as 
seek to change the resolution of this man, whom he had 
once known pliant as a reed and careless as a child. 

42 


494 


TUNDER TWO FLAGS. 


They were before long in saddle again and off, the com 
try growing wilder at each stride the horses took. 

“ It is all alive with Arabs for the next ten leagues, ' 
said Cecil, as he settled himself in his saddle. “ They have 
come northward and been sweeping the country like a 
locust-swarm, and we shall blunder on seme of them sooner 
or later. If they cut me down, don’t wait, but slash my 
sabre-tasche loose and ride off with it.” 

“All right, sir,” said Rake, obediently; but he thought 
to himself, “ Leave you alone with them demons ? Damn 
me if I will.” 

And away they went once more, in speed and in silence, 
the darkness of full night closing in on them, the skies 
being black with the heavy drift of rising storm-clouds. 

Meantime Cigarette was feasting with the officers of his 
regiment. The dinner was the best that the camp-scul- 
lions could furnish in honor of the two or three illustrious 
tourists who were on a visit to the headquarters of the 
Algerian Army ; and the Little One, the heroine of Zaraila, 
and the toast of every mess throughout Algeria, was as 
indispensable as the champagnes. Not that she was alto- 
gether herself to-night ; she was feverish, she was bitter, 
she was full of stinging ironies ; but that delicious gayety, 
like a kitten’s play, was gone from her, and its place, for 
the first time in her life, was supplied by unreal and hectic 
excitation. In truth, while she laughed, and coquetted, 
and fenced with the bright two-edged blade of her wit, and 
tossed down the wines into her little throat like a trooper, 
she was thinking nothing at all of what was around her, 
and very little of what she said or she did. She was thinking 
of the starless night out yonder, of the bleak arid country, 
of the great, dim, measureless plains; of one who was 
passing through them all, and one who might never return. 

It was the first time that' the absent had ever troubled 
her present ; it was the first time that ever this foolish, 
senseless, haunting, unconquerable fear for another had 
approached her > fear! — she had never known it for her- 
self, why should she feel it now for him ? — a man whose 
lips had touched her own as lightly, as indifferently, as 
they might have touched the leaves of a rose or the curls 
of a dog 1 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


495 


She felt her face burn with the flush of a keen, unbearable, 
passionate shame. Men by the score had wooed her love, 
to be flouted with the insouciant mischief of her coquetry, 
and forgotten to-morrow if they were shot to-day ; and 
now he — he whose careless, calm caress would make her 
heart vibrate and her limbs tremble with an emotion she 
had never known — he valued her love so little that he never 
even knew that he had roused it 1 To the proud young 
warrior of France a greater degradation, a deadlier hu- 
miliation, than this could not have come to her. 

Yet she was true as steel to him ; true with the strong 
and loyal fealty that is inborn with such natures as hers. 
To have betrayed what he had trusted to her, because she 
was neglected and wounded by him, would have been a 
feminine baseness of which the soldier-like soul of Cigarette 
would have been totally incapable. Her revenge might 
be fierce, and rapid, and sure, like the revenge of a soldier; 
but it could never be stealing and traitorous, and never 
like the revenge of a woman. 

Not a word escaped her that could have given a clew to 
the secret with which he had involuntarily weighted her; 
she only studied with interest and keenness the face and 
the words of this man whom he had loved, and from whom 
he had fled as criminals flee from their accusers. 

“What is your name?” she asked him, curtly, in one of 
the pauses of the amorous and witty nonsense that circu- 
lated in the tent in which the officers of Chasseurs were 
entertaining him. 

“Well — some call me Seraph.” 

“Ah ! you have pelits. noms then in Albion ? I should 
have thought she was too somber and too stiff for them. 
Besides ?” 

“ Lyonnesse.” 

“What a droll name I What are you ?” 

“ A soldier.” 

“ Good ! What grade ?” 

“A Colonel of Guards.” 

Cigarette gave a little whistle to herself ; she remem- 
bered that a Marshal of France had once said of a certain 
Chasseur, “He has the seat of the English Guards.” 

“ My pretty catechist, M. le Due does not tell you his 
title,” cried one of- the officers. 


49G 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Cigarette interrupted him with a toss of her head. 

“ Ouf ! Titles are nothing to me. I am a child of the 
People. So you are a Duke, are you, M. le Seraph ? 
Well, that is not much, to my thinking. Bah ! there is 
Pialin made a Duke in Paris, and there are aristocrats 
here wearing privates’ uniforms, and littering down their 
own horses. Bah 1 Have you that sort of thing in Al- 
bion ?” 

“Attorneys throned on high, and gentlemen glad to 
sweep crossings ? Oh yes !” laughed her interlocutor. 
“But you speak of aristocrats in your ranks — that reminds 
me. Have you not in this corps a soldier called Louis 
Victor ?” 

He had turned as he spoke to one of the officers who 
answered him in the affirmative ; while Cigarette listened 
with all her curiosity and all her interest, that needed a 
deeper name, heightened and tight-strung. 

“A fine fellow,” continued the Chef d' Escadron to whom 
he had appealed. “ He behaved magnificently the other 
day at Zaraila ; he must be distinguished for it. He is just 
sent on a perilous errand, but though so quiet he is a croc - 
mitaine, and woe to the Arabs who slay him 1 Are you 
acquainted with him ?” 

“Hot in the least. But I wished to hear all I could of 
him. I have been told he seems above his present position. 
Is it so ?” 

“ Likely enough, monsieur, he seems a gentleman. But 
then we have many gentlemen in the ranks, and we can 
make no difference for that. Cigarette can tell you more 
of him ; she used to complain that he bowed like a Court 
chamberlain.” 

“ Oh-h5 — I did !” cried Cigarette, stung into instant 
irony because pained and irritated by being appealed to 
on the subject. “And, of course, when so many of his 
officers have the manners of Pyrenean bears, it is a little 
awkward for him to bring us the manners of a Palace !” 

Which effectually chastised the Chef d’Escadron, who 
was one of those who had a ton de garnison of the rough- 
est, and piqued himself on his powers of fence much more 
than on his habits of delicacy. 

“Has this Victor any history?” asked the English 
Duke 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


497 


“ He has written one with his sword ; a fine one,” said 
Cigarette, curtly. “We are not given here to care much 
about any other.” 

“Quite right; I asked because a friend of mine who had 
seen his carvings wished to serve him if it were possible ; 
and -” 

“Ho! That is Miladi, I suppose ?” Cigarette’s eyes 
flashed fire instantly, in wrath and suspicion. “ What did 
she tell you about him, la belle dedaigneuseV ’ 

“ I am ignorant of whom you speak ?” he answered, with 
something of surprise and annoyance. 

“Are you?” said Cigarette, in derision. “ I doubt that. 
Of whom should I speak but of her? Bah ! She insulted 
him, she offered him gold, she sent my men the spoils of 
her table, as if they were paupers, and he thinks it all 
divine because it is done by Madame la Princesse Corona 
d’Amagiie ! Faugh ! when he was delirious, the other night, 
he could babble of nothing but of her — of her — of her !” 

The jealous, fiery impatience in her vanquished every 
other thought; she was a child in much, she was untutored 
in all ; she had no thought that by her scornful vitupera- 
tion of “ Miladi” she could either harm Cecil or betray 
herself. But she was amazed to see the English guest 
change color with a haughty anger that he strove to sub- 
due as he half rose and answered her with an accent in his 
voice that reminded her — she knew not why — of Bel-a- 
faire-peur and of Marquise. 

“ Madame la Princesse Corona d’Amagiie is my sister ; 
why do you venture to couple the name of this Chasseur 
with hers ?” 

Cigarette sprang to her feet, vivacious, imperious, reck- 
less, dared to anything by the mere fact of being publicly 
arraigned. 

“ Pardieu ! Is it insult to couple the silver pheasant 
with the Eagles of France ? — a pretty idea, truly 1 So she 
is your sister, is she? Miladi? Well, then, tell her from 
me to think twice before she outrages a soldier with ‘ pat- 
ronage;’ and tell her, too, that had I been he I would have 
ground my ivory toys into powder before I would have let 
them become the playthings of a grande dame who tend- 
ered me gold for them I” 

2 G 


42 * 


498 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


The Englishman, looked at her with astonishment that 
was mingled with a vivid sense of intense annoyance and 
irritated pride, that the name he cherished closest should 
be thus brought in, at a camp dinner, on the lips of a vivan- 
difere and in connection with a trooper of Chasseurs. 

‘ ! I do not understand your indignation, mademoiselle, ” 
he said, with an impatient stroke to his beard. “ There is 
no occasion for it. Madame Corona d’Amagiie, my sister,” 
he continued, to the officers present, “became accidentally 
acquainted with the skill at sculpture of this Corporal of 
yours; he appeared to her a man of much refinement and 
good breeding. She chanced to name him to me, and 
feeling some pity ” 

“ M. le Due !” cried the ringing voice of Cigarette, loud 
and startling as a bugle-note, while she stood like a little 
lioness, flushed with the draughts of champagne and with 
the warmth of wrath at once jealous and generous, “ keep 
your compassion until it is asked of you. No soldier of 
France needs it; that I promise you. I know this man 
that you talk of ‘pitying.’ Well, I saw him at Zaraila 
three weeks ago ; he had drawn up his men to die with 
them .rather than surrender and yield up the guidon; I 
dragged him half dead, when the field was won, from under 
his horse, and his first conscious act was to give the drink 
that I brought him to a wretch who had thieved from him. 
Our life here is hell upon earth to such as ho, yet none ever 
heard a lament wrung out of him ; he is gone to the chances 
of death to-night as most men go to their mistresses’ kisses ; 
he is a soldier Napoleon would have honored. Such an one 
is not to have the patronage of a Miladi Corona, nor the 
pity of a stranger of England. Let the first respect him ; 
let the last imitate him !” 

And Cigarette, having pronounced her defense and her 
eulogy with the vibrating eloquence of some orator from a 
tribune, threw her champagne goblet down with a crash, 
and, breaking through the arms outstretched to detain her, 
forced her way out despite them, and left her hosts alone 
in their lighted tent. 

“G'est Cigarette /” said the Chef d’Escadron, with a 
shrug of his shoulders, as of one who explained, by that 
sentence, a whole world of irreclaimable eccentricities. 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


499 


“A strange little Amazon 1” said their guest. " Is she 
in love with this Victor, that I have offended her so much 
with his name?” 

The Major shrugged his shoulders*. 

“I don’t know that, monsieur,” answered one. “She 
will defend a man in his absence, and rate him to his face 
most soundly. Cigarette whirls about like a little paper 
windmill, just as the breeze blows; but, as the windmill 
never leaves its stick, so she is always constant to the Tri- 
color.” 

Their guest said little more on the subject; in his own 
thoughts he was bitterly resentful that, by the mention of 
this Chasseur’s fortunes, he should have brought in the 
name he loved so well — the purest, fairest, haughtiest 
name in Europe — into a discussion with a vivandibre at a 
camp dinner. 

Chateauroy, throughout, had said nothing; he had list- 
ened in silence, the darkness lowering still more heavily 
upon his swarthy features; only now he opened his lips for 
a few brief words : 

“ Mon cher Due, tell Madame not to waste the rare balm 
of her pity. The fellow you inquire for was an outcast and 
an outlaw when he came to us. lie fights well — it is often 
a blackguard’s virtue !” 

His guest nodded, and changed the subject ; his impa- 
tience and aversion at the introduction of his sister’s name 
into the discussion made him drop the theme unpursued, 
and let it die out forgotten. 

Venetia Corona associated with an Algerian trooper I 
If Cigarette had been of his own sex, he could have dashed 
the white teeth down her throat for having spoken of the 
two in one breath. 

And as, later on, he stretched his gallant limbs out on 
his narrow camp palliasse, tired with a long day in saddle 
under the hot African sun, the Seraph fell asleep with his 
right arm under his handsome golden head, and thought 
no more of this unknown French trooper. 

But Cigarette remained wakeful. 

She lay curled up in the straw against her pet horse, 
Etoile Filante, with her head on the beast’s glossy flank 
and her hand among his mane. She often slept thus in 


500 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


camp, and the horse would lie still and cramped for hours 
rather than awaken her, or, if he rose, would take the most 
watchful heed to leave unharmed the slender limbs, the 
flushed cheeks, the frank fair brow of the sleeper beneath 
him, that one stroke of his hoof could have stamped out 
into a bruised and shapeless mass. 

To-night Etoile Filante slept, and his mistress was 
awake — wide awake, with her eyes looking out into the 
darkness beyond, with a passionate mist of unshed tears in 
them, and her mouth quivering with pain and with wrath. 
The vehement excitation had not died away in her, but 
there had come with it a dull, spiritless, aching depression. 
It had roused her to fury to hear the reference to her rival 
spoken — of that aristocrat whose name had been on Cecil's 
lips when he had been delirious. She had kept his secret 
loyally, she had defended him vehemently; there was some- 
thing that touched her to the core in the thought of the 
love with which he had recognized this friend who, in igno- 
rance, spoke of him as of some unknown French soldier. 
She could not tell what the history was, but she could 
divine nearly enough to feel its pathos and its pain. She 
had known, in her short life, more of men and of their 
passions and of their fortunes than many lives of half a 
century in length can ever do ; she could guess, nearly 
enough to be wounded with its sorrow, the past which had 
exiled the man who had kept by him his lost mother’s ring 
as the sole relic of years to which he was dead as utterly 
as though he were lying in his coffin. No matter what the 
precise reason was — women, or debt, or accident, or ruin — 
these two, who had been familiar comrades, were now as 
strangers to each other; the oue slumbered in ignorance 
near her, the other had gone out to the close peril of death, 
lest the eyes of his friend should recognize his face and read 
his secret. It troubled her, it weighed on her, it smote her 
with a pang. It might be that now, even now — this very 
moment, while her gaze watched the dusky shadows of the 
night chase one another along the dreary plains — a shot 
might have struck down this life that had been stripped of 
name and fame and country ; even now all might be over! 

And Cigarette felt a cold sickly shudder seize her that 
never before, at death or danger, had chilled the warm 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


501 


swift current of her bright French blood. In bitter scorn 
at herself, she muttered hot oaths between her pretty 
teeth. 

Mere de Dieu! he had touched her lips as carelessly as 
her own kiss would have touched the rose-hued waxen 
petals of a cluster of oleander-blossoms ; and she cared for 
him still ! 

While the Seraph slept drearalessly, with the tents of the 
French camp around him, and the sleepless eyes of Cigarette 
watched afan off the dim distant forms of the videttes as 
they circled slowly round at their outpost duty, eight 
leagues off, through a vast desert of shadow and silence 
the two horsemen swept swiftly on. Not a word had passed 
between them ; they rode close together in unbroken still- 
ness ; they were scarcely visible to each other, for there 
was no moon, and storm-clouds obscured the skies. Now 
and then their horses’ hoofs struck fire from a flint-stone,, 
and the flash sparkled through the darkness ; often not 
even the sound of their gallop was audible on the gray, 
dry, loose soil. 

Every rood of the road was sown thick with peril ; no 
frowning ledge of rock, with pine-roots in its clefts, but 
might serve as the barricade behind which some foe lurked ; 
no knot of cypress-shrubs, black even on that black sheet 
of shadow, but might be pierced with the steel tubes of 
leveled waiting muskets. 

Pillaging, burning, devastating wherever they could, in 
what was to them a holy war of resistance to the infidel 
and the invader, the predatory tribes had broken 6ut into 
a revolt which the rout of Zaraila, heavy blow though it 
had been to them, had by no means ended. They were 
still in arms, infesting the country everywhere southward, 
defying regular pursuit, impervious to regular attacks, 
carrying on the harassing guerrilla warfare at which they 
were such adepts, and causing thus to their Frankish foe 
more irritation and more loss than decisive engagements 
would have produced. They feared nothing, had nothing 
to lose, and could subsist almost upon nothing. They 
might be driven into the desert, they might even be ex- 
terminated after long pursuit; but they would never be 
vanquished. And they were scattered now far and wide 


502 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


over the country ; every cave might shelter, every ravine 
might inclose them ; they appeared here, they appeared 
there ; they swooped down on a convoy, they carried sword 
and flame into a settlement, they darted like a flight of hawks 
upon a foraging-party, they picked off any vidette as he 
wheeled his horse round in the moonlight ; and every yard 
of the sixty miles which the two gray chargers of the Chas- 
seurs d’Afrique must cover ere their service was done was 
as rife with death as though its course lay over the vol- 
canic line of an earthquake or a hollow mined and sprung. 

They had reached the center of the plain when the sound 
they had long looked for rang on their ears, piercing the 
heavy breathless stillness of the night. It was the Allah- 
il-Allah of their foes, the war-cry of the Moslem. Out of 
the gloom — whether from long pursuit or some near hiding- 
place they could not tell — there broke suddenly upon them 
the fury of an Arab onslaught. In the darkness all they 
could see were the flash of steel, the flame of fierce eyes 
against their own, the white steam of smoking horses, the 
spray of froth flung off the snorting nostrils, the rapid 
glitter of the curved flissas— whether two, or twenty, or 
twice a hundred were upon them they could not know — 
they never did know. All of which they were conscious 
was that in an instant, from the tranquil melancholy around 
them of the great, dim, naked space, they were plunged 
into the din, the fury, the heat, the close, crushing, horrible 
entanglement of conflict, without the power to perceive or 
to number their foes, and only able to follow the sheer 
simple instincts of attack and of defense. All they were 
sensible of was one of those confused moments, deafening, 
blinding, filled with violence and rage and din — an eternity 
in semblance, a second in duration — that can never be 
traced, never be recalled, yet in whose feverish excitement 
men do that which, in their calmer hours, would look to 
them a fable of some Amadis of Gaul. 

How they were attacked, how they resisted, how they 
struck, how they were encompassed, how they thrust back 
those who were hurled on them in the black night, with 
the north sea-wind like ice upon their faces, and the loose 
African soil drifting up in clouds of sand around them, 
they could never have told. Nor how they strained free 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


503 


from the armed ring that circled them, and beat aside the 
shafts of lances and the blades of swords, and forced their 
chargers breast to breast against the fence of steel, and 
through the tempest of rage, and blows, and shouts, and 
wind, and driven sand, cut their way through the foe whose 
very face they scarce could see, and plunged away into the 
shadows across the desolation of the plain, pursued, whether 
by one or by a thousand they could not guess ; for the gal- 
lop was noiseless on the powdered soil, and the Arab yell 
of baffled passion and slaughterous lust was half drowned 
in the rising of the wind-storm. Had it been day, they 
would have seen their passage across the level table-land 
'.ttaced by a crimson stream upon the sand, in which the 
□lood of Frank and Arab blended equally. 

As it was, they dashed headlong down througn the dark- 
ness that grew yet denser and blacker as the storm rose. 
For miles the ground was level before them, and they had 
only to let the half-maddened horses, that had as by a 
miracle escaped all injury, rush on at their own will through 
the whirl of the wind that drove the dust upward in spiral 
columns and brought icy breaths of the north over the sear, 
sunburnt, southern wastes. 

For a long space they had no sense but that of rapid 
ceaseless motion through the thick gloom and against the 
pressure of the violent blasts. The speed of their gallop 
and the strength of the currents of air were like some nar- 
cotic that drowned and that dizzied perception. In the 
intense darkness neither could see, neither hear, the other; 
the instinct of the beasts kept them together, but no word 
could be heard above the roar of the storm, and no light 
broke the somber veil of shadow through which they passed 
as fast as leopards course through the night. The first 
faint streak of dawn grew gray in the east when Cecil felt 
his charger stagger and sway beneath him, and halt, worn 
out and quivering in every sinew with fatigue. He threw 
himself off the animal in time to save himself from falling 
with it as it reeled and sank to the ground. 

“ Massena cannot stir another yard,” he said. “ Do you 
think they follow us still ?” 

There was no reply. 

He strained his sight to pierce the darkness, but he could 


504 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


distinguish nothing; the gloom was still too deep. He 
spoke more loudly; still there was no reply. Then he 
raised his voice in a shout ; it rang through the silence, 
and, when it ceased, the silence reigned again. 

A deadly chill came on him. How had he missed his 
comrade ? They must be far apart, he knew, since no 
response was given to his summons ; or — the alternative 
rose before him with a terrible foreboding. 

That intense quiet had a repose as of death in it, a 
ghastly loneliness that seemed filled with desolation. His 
horse was stretched before him on the sand, powerless to 
rise and drag itself a rood onward, and fast expiring. 
From the plains around him not a sound came, either of 
friend or foe. The consciousness that he was alone, that 
he had lost forever the only friend left to him, struck on 
him with that conviction which so often foreruns the assur- 
ance of calamity. Without a moment’s pause, he plunged 
back in the direction lie had come, leaving the charger on 
the ground to pant its life out as it must, and sought to 
feel his way along, so as to seek as best he could the com- 
panion he had deserted. He still could not see a rood be- 
fore him, but he went on slowly, with some vague hope 
that he should ere long reach the man whom he knew death 
or the fatality of accident alone would keep from his side. 
He could not feel or hear anything that gave him the 
slightest sign or clew to aid his search ; he only wandered 
farther from his horse, and risked falling afresh into the 
hands of his pursuers; he shouted again with all his 
strength, but his own voice alone echoed over the plains, 
while his heart stood still with the same frozen dread that 
a man feels when, wrecked on some barren shore, his cry 
for rescue rings back on his own ear over the waste of 
waters. 

The flicker of the dawn was growing lighter in the sky, 
and he could see dimly now, as in some winter day’s dark 
twilight, though all around him hung the leaden mist, with 
the wild winds driving furiously. It was with difficulty 
almost that he kept his feet against their force ; but he 
was blown onward by their current, though beaten from 
side to side, and he still made his way forward. He had 
repassed the ground already traversed by some hundred 


SEUL AU MONDF. 


505 


yards or more, which seemed the length of many miles in 
the hurricane that was driving over the earth and sky, when 
some outline still duskier than the dusky shadow caught 
his sight; it was the body of a horse, standing on guard 
ever the fallen body of a man. 

Another moment and he was beside them. 

“ My God ! Are you hurt ?” 

He could see nothing but an indistinct and shapeless 
mass, without form or color, to mark it out from the brood- 
ing gloom and from the leaden earth. But the voice he 
knew so well answered him with the old love and fealty in 
it ; eager with fear for him. 

“When did you miss me, sir? I didn’t mean you to 
know ; I held on as long as I could ; and when I couldn’t 
no longer, I thought you was safe not to see I’d knocked” 
over, so dark as it was.” 

“ Great Heavens ! You are hurt, then ?” 

“Just finished, sir. Lord ! it don’t matter. Only you 
ride on, Mr. Cecil ; ride on, I say. Don’t mind me.” 

“What is it? When were you struck? 0 Heaven I I 
never dreamt ” 

Cecil hung over him, striving in vain through the shadows 
to read the truth from the face on which he felt by instinct 
the seal of death was set. 

“ I never meant you should know, sir. I meant just to 
drop behind, and die on the quiet. You see, sir, it was 
just this way; they hit me as we forced through them. 
There’s the lance-head iu my loins now. I pressed it in 
hard, and kept the blood from flowing, and thought I 
should hold out so till the sun rose. But I couldn’t do it 
so long; I got sick and faint after awhile, and I knew 
well enough it was death. So I dropped down while I’d 
sense left to check the horse and get out of saddle in 
silence. I hoped you wouldn’t miss me, in the darkness 
and the noise the wind was making; and you didn’t hear 
me then, sir; I was glad.” 

His voice was checked in a quick gasping breath; his 
only thought had been to lie down and die in solitude so 
that his master might be saved. 

A great sob shook Cecil as he heard ; no false hope came 
to him ; he felt that this man was lost to him forever, that 

43 


506 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


this was the sole recompense which the cruelty of Africa 
would give to a fidelity passing the fidelity of woman ; 
these throes of dissolution the only payment with which 
fate would ever requite a loyalty that had held no travail 
weary, no exile pain, and no danger worthy counting, so 
long as they were encountered and endured in his own 
service. 

“ Don’t take on about it, sir,” whispered Rake, striving 
to raise his head that he might strain his eyes better 
through the gloom to see his master’s face. “ It was sure 
to come some time ; and I ain’t in no pain — to speak of. 
Do leave me, Mr. Cecil — leave me, for God’s sake, and save 
yourself I” 

“ Did you leave me ?” 

The answer was very low, and his voice shook as he 
uttered it; but through the roar of the hurricane Rake 
heard it. 

“ That was different, sir,” he said, simply. “Let me lie 
here, and go you on. It’ll soon be over, and there’s naught 
to be done.” 

“ O God ! is no help possible ?” 

“ Don’t take on, sir ; it’s no odds. I allays was a scamp,, 
and scamps die game, you know. My life’s been a rare 
spree, count it all and all ; and it’s a great good thing, 
you see, sir, to go off quick like this. I might have been 
laid in hospital. If you’d only take the beast and ride on, 
sir ” 

“Hush 1 hush I Would you make me coward, or brute, 
or both ?” 

The words broke in an agony from him. The time had 
been when he had been himself stretched in what he had 
thought was death, in just such silence, in just such soli- 
tude, upon the bare baked earth, far from men’s aid, and 
near only to the hungry eyes of watching beasts of prey. 
Then he had been very calm, and waited with indifferenco 
for the end; now his eyes swept over the remorseless 
wastes, that were growing faintly visible under the coming 
dawn, with all the impatience, the terror, of despair. Death 
had smitten down many beside him ; buoyant youth and 
dauntless manhood he had seen a thousand times swept 
under the great waves of war and lost forever ; but it had 


SEUL AU MONDE. 


50T 


an anguish for him here that he would never have known 
had he felt his own life-blood well out over the sand. The 
whole existence of this man had been sacrificed for him, 
and its only reward was a thrust of a lance in a midnight 
fray — a grave in an alien soil. 

His grief fell dully on ears half deafened already to the 
sounds of the living world. The exhaustion that follows 
on great loss of blood was upon the soldier who for the last 
half hour had lain there in the darkness and the stillness, 
quietly waiting death, and not once seeking even to raise 
his voice for succor lest the cry should reach and should 
imperil his master. 

The morning had broken now, but the storm had not 
lulled. The northern winds were sweeping over the plains 
in tenfold violence, and the rains burst and poured, with 
the fury of water-spouts on the crust of the parched, cracked 
earth. Around them there was nothing heard or seen ex- 
cept the leaden angry mists, tossed to and fro under the 
hurricane, and the white light of the coming day breaking 
lividly through the clouds. The world held no place of 
more utter desolation, more unspeakable loneliness ; and 
in its misery, Cecil, flung down upon the sands beside him, 
could do nothing except — helpless to aid, and powerless to 
gave — watch the last breath grow feebler and feebler, until 
it faded out from the only life that had been faithful to him. 

By the fitful gleams of day he could see the blood slowly 
ebbing out from the great gap where the lance-head was 
still bedded with its wooden shaft snapped in two; he 
could see the drooped head that he had raised upon his 
knee, with the yellow northern curls that no desert suns 
had darkened ; and Rake’s eyes, smiling so brightly and 
so bravely still, looked up from under their weary lids to 
his. 

“ I’d never let you take my hand before, sir : just take it 
once now — will you? — while I can see you still.” 

Their hands met as he asked it, and held each other close 
and long; all the loyal service of the one life, and all the 
speechless gratitude of the other, told better than by all 
words in that one farewell. 

A light that was not from the stormy dusky morning 
shone over the soldier’s face. 


508 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Time was, sir,” he said, with a smile, “when I used to 
think as how, some day or another, when I should have 
done something great and grand, and you was back among 
your own again, and they here had given me the Cross, I’d 
have asked you to have done that before all the Army, and 
just to have said to ’em, if so you’d liked, ‘He was a scamp, 
and he wasn’t thought good for naught; but he kep’ true 
to me, and you see it made him go straight, and I aren’t 
ashamed to call him my friend.’ I used to think that, sir, 
though ’twas silly, perhaps. But it’s best as it is — a deal 
best, no doubt. If you was only back safe in camp ” 

“ 0 God ! cease ! I am not worthy one thought of love 
like yours.” 

“ Yes, you are, sir — leastways you was to me. When you 
took pity on me, it was just a toss up if I didn’t go right 
to the gallows. Don’t grieve that way, Mr. Cecil. If I 
could just have seen you home again in your place, I should 
have been glad — that’s all. You’ll go back one day, sir; 
when you do, tell the King I ain’t never forgot him.” 

His voice grew faint as the last sentence stole from his 
lips ; he lay quite still, his head leant back against his 
master; and the day came, with the north winds driving 
over the plains, and the gray mists tossed by them to and 
fro like smoke. 

There was a long silence, a pause in which the wind- 
storm ceased, and the clouds of the loosed sands sunk. 
Alone, with the wastes stretching around them, were the 
living and the dying man, with the horse standing motion- 
less beside them, and, above, the gloom of the sullen sky. 
No aid was possible : they could but wait, in the stupefac- 
tion of despair, for the end of all to come. 

In that awful stillness, in that sudden lull in the madness 
of the hurricane, death had a horror which it never wore 
in the riot of the battle-field, in the intoxication of the 
slaughter. There was no pity in earth or heaven ; the hard 
hot ground sucked down its fill of blood ; the icy air en- 
wrapped them like a shroud. 

The faithfulness of love, the strength of gratitude, were 
of no avail; the one perished in agony, the other was 
powerless to save. 

In that momentary hush, as the winds sank low, the heavy 


8EUL AU MONDE. 


509 


eyes, half sightless now, sought with their old wistful dog- 
like loyalty the face to which so soon they would be blind 
forever. 

‘‘Would you tell me once, sir — now ? I never asked — 
I never would have done — but may be I might know in this 
last minute ; you never sinned that sin you bear the charge 
on ?” 

“ God is my witness, no.” 

The light, that was like sunlight, shone once more in the 
aching, wandering eyes. 

“ I knew, I knew ! It was — — ” 

Cecil bowed his head over him, lower and lower 

“ Hush ! He was but a child ; and I 

With a sudden and swift motion, as though new life 
were thrilling in him, Rake raised himself erect, his arms 
stretched outward to the east, where the young day was 
breaking. 

“ I knew, I knew ! 1 never doubted. You will go back 
to your own some day, and men shall learn the truth — - 
thank God, thank God 1” 

Then, with that light still on his face, his head fell back- 
ward ; and with one quick, brief sigh his life fled out forever. 
* * * * * * 

The time passed on ; the storm had risen afresh ; the 
violence of the gusts blew yellow sheets of sand whirling 
over the plains. Alone, with the dead across his knees, 
Cecil sat motionless as though turned to stone. His eyes 
were dry and fixed ; but ever and again a great tearless 
sob shook him from head to foot. The only life that linked 
him with the past, the only love that had suffered all things 
for his sake, were gone, crushed out as though they never 
had been, like some insect trodden in the soil. 

He had lost all consciousness, all memory, save of that 
lifeless thing which lay across his knees, like a felled tree, 
like a broken log, with the glimmer of the tempestuous day 
so chill and white upon the upturned face. 

He was alone on earth; and the solitudes around him 
were not more desolate than his own fate. 

He was like a man numbed and stupefied by intense cold ; 
his veins seemed stagnant, and his sight could only see 
those features that became so terribly serene, so fearfully 
43 * 


510 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


unmoved with the dread calm of death. Yet the old me- 
chanical instincts of a soldier guided him still ; he vaguely 
knew that his errand had to be done, must be done, let his 
heart ache as it would, let him long as he might to lie down 
by the side of his only friend, and leave the torture of life 
to grow still in him also for evermore. 

Instinctively, he moved to carry out the duty trusted to 
him. lie looked east and west, north and south ; there 
was nothing in sight that could bring him aid; there were 
only the dust-clouds hurled in billows hither and thither by 
the bitter winds still blowing from the sea. All that could 
be done had to be done by himself alone. His own safety 
hung on the swiftness of his flight : for aught he knew, at 
every moment, out of the mist and the driven sheets of 
sand there might rush the desert-horses of his foes. But 
this memory was not with him : all he thought of was that 
burden stretched across his limbs, which, laid down one 
hour here unwatched, would be the prey of the jackal and 
the vulture. He raised it reverently in his arms, and with 
long laborious effort drew its weight up across the saddle 
of the charger which stood patiently waiting by, turning 
its docile eyes with a plaintive wondering sadness on the 
body of the rider it had loved. Then he mounted him- 
self; and with the head of his lost comrade borne up upon 
his arm, and rested gently on his breast, he rode westward 
over the great plain to where his mission lay. 

The horse paced slowly beneath the double load of dead, 
and living ; he would not urge the creature faster on ; every 
movement that shook the drooping limbs, or jarred the 
repose of that last sleep, seemed desecration. He passed 
the place where his own horse was stretched : the vultures 
were already there. He shuddered ; and then pressed 
faster on, as though the beasts and birds of prey would rob 
him of his burden ere lie could give it sanctuary. And so 
he rode, mile after mile, over the barren land, with no com- 
panion save the dead. 

The winds blew fiercely in his teeth ; the sand was in his 
eyes and hair ; the way was long, and weary, and sown 
thick with danger ; but he knew of nothing, felt and saw 
nothing save that one familiar face so strangely changed 
and transfigured by that glory with which death had 
touched it, 


“JE V0U8 AOllilTE VOTEE VIE.” 


511 


CHAPTER XXXI. 

“JE YOUS ACHATE YOTRE VIE.” 

Thus burdened, he made his way for over two leagues. 
The hurricane never abated, and the blinding dust rose 
around him in great waves. The horse fell lame ; he had 
to dismount, and move slowly and painfully over the loose 
heavy soil on foot, raising the drooping head of the lifeless 
rider. It was bitter, weary, cruel travail, of an intolerable 
l$bor, of an intolerable pain. 

Once or twice he grew sick and giddy, and ‘lost for a 
moment all consciousness ; but he pressed onward, resolute 
not to yield and leave the vultures hovering aloft their 
prey. He was still somewhat weakened by the wounds of 
Zaraila ; he had been bruised and exhausted by the skirm- 
ish of the past night ; he was weary and heart-broken ; 
but he did not yield to his longing to sink down on the 
sands, and let his life ebb out : he held patiently onward 
through the infinite misery of the passage. At last he drew 
near the caravanserai where he had been directed to obtain 
a change of horses. It stood midway in the distance that 
he had to traverse, and almost alone when the face of the 
country changed, and was more full of color, and more 
broken into rocky and irregular surface. 

As a man walks in a dream, he led the sinking beast 
toward its shelter, as its irregular 'corner towers became 
dimly perceptible to him through the dizzy mists that had 
obscured his sight. By sheer instinct he found his route 
straight toward the open arch of its entrance-way, and 
into the square court-yard thronged with mules, and camels, 
and horses ; for the caravanserai stood on the only road 
that led through that district to the south, and was the only 
nouse of call for drovers, or shelter for traveler and artists 
of Europe who might pass that way. The groups in the 
court paused in their converse and in their occupations, 


512 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and looked in awe at the gray charger with its strange 
burden, and the French Chasseur who came so blindly for- 
ward like a man feeling his passage through the dark. 
There was something in the sight that had a vague terror 
for them before they clearly saw what this thing was which 
was thus brought into their presence. Cecil moved slowly 
on into their midst, his hand on the horse’s rein; then a 
great darkness covered his sight ; he swayed to and fro, 
and fell senseless on the gray stone of the paved court, 
while the muleteers and the camel-drivers, the Kabyls and 
the French, who were mingled there, crowded around him 
in fear and in wonder. When consciousness returned to 
him, he was lying on a stone bench in the shadow of the 
wall, with the coolness of the fountain water bubbling near, 
and a throng of lean, bronzed, eager faces about him in 
the mid-day sunlight which had broken through the wind- 
storm. 

Instantly he remembered all. 

“Where is he?” he asked. 

They knew that he meant the dead man, and answered 
him in a hushed murmur of many voices. They had placed 
the body gently down within, in a darkened chamber. 

A shiver passed over him ; he stretched his hand out 
for water that they held to him. 

“ Saddle me a fresh horse ; I have my work to do.” 

He knew that for no friendship, or grief, or suffering, or 
self-pity might a soldier pause by the wayside while his 
errand was still undone, his duty unfulfilled. 

He drank the water thirstily ; then reeling slightly still 
from the weakness that wp-s still upon him, he rose, reject- 
ing their offers of aid. “ Take me to him,” he said sim- 
ply. They understood him ; there were French soldiers 
among them, and they took him, without question or com- 
ment, across the court to the little square stone cell within 
one of the towers, where they had laid the corpse, with 
nothing to break the quiet and the solitude except the low, 
soft cooing of some doves that had their homes in its dark 
comers, and flew in and out at pleasure through the oval 
aperture that served as window. 

He motioned them all back with his hand, and went into 
the gloom of the chamber alone. Not one among them 
followed. 


“JE YOUS ACIlilTE YOTRE VIE.” 


513 


When he came forth again the reckless and riotous fan- 
tannins of France turned silently and reverentially away, 
so that they should not look upon his face. For it was 
well known throughout the array that no common tie had 
bound together the exiles of England, and the fealty of 
comrade to comrade was sacred in their sight. 

The fresh animal, saddled, was held ready outside the 
gates. He crossed the court, moving still like a man with- 
out sense of what he did ; he had the instinct to carry out 
the mission trusted to him, instantly and accurately, but he 
had no distinct perception or memory of aught else save of 
those long-familiar features of which, ere he could return, 
the cruel sun of Africa would not have spared one trace. 

He passed under the shadow of the gateway arch — a 
shadow black and intense against the golden light which, 
with the ceasing of the storm, flooded the land in the full 
morning. There were movement, noise, change, haste in 
the entrance. Besides the arrival of the detachment of 
the line and a string of northward-bound camels, the reti- 
nue of some travelers of rank was preparing for depart- 
ure, and the resources of the humble caravanserai were 
taxed beyond their powers. The name that some of the 
hurrying grooms shouted loudly in their impatience broke 
through his stupor and reached him. It was that of the 
woman whom, however madly, he loved with all the 
strength of a passion born out of utter hopelessness. He 
turned to the outrider nearest him : 

“ You are of the Princess Corona’s suite ? What does 
she do here ?” 

“Madame travels to see the country and the war.” 

“ The war ? This is no place for her. The land is alive 
with danger — rife with death.” 

“ Miladi travels with M. le Due, her brother. Miladi 
does not know what fear is.” 

“ But ” 

The remonstrance died on his lips ; he stood gazing out 
from the gloom of the arch at a face close to him, on which 
the sun shone full, a face unseen for twelve long years, 
and which, a moment before laughing and careless in the 
light, changed, and grew set, and rigid, and pale with the 
pallor of an unutterable horror. His own flushed, and 


514 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


moved, and altered with a wholly different emotion, — . 
emotion that was, above all, of an intense and yearning 
tenderness. For a moment both stood motionless and 
speechless ; then, with a marvelous self-command and self- 
restraint, Cecil brought his hand to his brow in military 
salute, passed with the impassiveness of a soldier who 
passed a gentleman, reached his charger, and rode away 
upon his errand over the brown and level ground. 

He had known his brother in that fleeting glance, but he 
hoped that his brother would see no more in him than a 
French trooper who bore resemblance by a strange hazard 
to one long believed to be dead and gone. The instinct of 
generosity, the instinct of self-sacriflce, moved him now as, 
long ago one fatal night, they had moved him to bear the 
sin of his mother’s darling as his own. 

Full remembrance, full consideration of what he had 
done, never came to him as he dashed on across the 
many leagues that still lay between him and his goal. His 
one impulse had been to spare the other from the knowl- 
edge that he lived ; his one longing was to have the hard- 
ness and the bitterness of his own life buried in the 
oblivion of a soldier’s grave. 

****** 

Within six and thirty hours the instructions he bore were 
in the tent of the Chef du Bataillon whom they were to 
direct, and he himself returned to the caravanserai to fulfill 
with his own hand to the dead those last offices which he 
would delegate to none. It was night when he arrived; 
all was still and deserted. He inquired if the party of 
tourists was gone; they answered him in the affirmative; 
there only remained the detachment of the French in- 
fantry, which were billeted there for awhile. 

It was in the coolness and the hush of the night, with 
the great stars shining clearly over the darkness of the 
plains, that they made the single grave, under a leaning 
shelf of rock, with the somber fans of a pine spread above 
it, and nothing near but the sleeping herds of goats. The 
sullen echo of the soldiers’ muskets gave its only funeral 
r< quiem ; and the young lambs and kids in many a future 
spring-time would come and play, and browse, and stretch 
their little tired limbs upon its sod, its sole watchers in the 
desolation of the plains. 


#C JE VOUS ACIlijTE VOTRE VIE. ,, 


515 


When all was over, and the startled flocks had settled 
once again to rest and slumber, Cecil still remained there 
alone. Thrown down upon the grave, he never moved as 
hour after hour went by. To others that lonely and un- 
noticed tomb would be as nothing; only one among the 
thousand marks left on the bosom of the violated earth by 
the ravenous and savage lusts of war. But to him it held 
all that had bound him to his lost youth, his lost country, 
his lost peace ; all that had remained of the years that 
were gone, and were now as a dream of the night. This 
man had followed him, cleaved to him, endured misery and 
rejected honor for his sake ; and all the recompense such 
a life received was to be stilled forever by a spear-thrust 
of an unknown foe, unthanked, undistinguished, unavenged I 
It seemed to him like murder — murder with which his own 
hand was stained. 

The slow night hours passed ; in the stillness that had 
succeeded to the storm of the past day there was not a 
sound except the bleating of the young goats straying 
from the herd. He lay prostrate under the black boughs 
of the pine ; the exhaustion of great fatigue was on him ; 
a grief, acute as remorse, consumed him for the man who, 
following his fate, had only found at the end a nameless 
and lonely grave in the land of his exile. 

He started with a thrill of almost superstitious fear as 
through the silence he heard a name whispered — the name 
of his childhood, of his past. 

He sprang to his feet, and as he turned in the moonlight 
he saw once more his brother’s face, pale as the face of the 
dead, and strained with an agonizing dread. Concealment 
was no longer possible : the younger man knew that the 
elder lived ; knew it by a strange and irresistible certainty 
that needed no proof, that left no place for hope or fear in 
its chill, leaden, merciless conviction 

For some moments neither spoke. A flood of innumer- 
able memories choked thought or word in both. They 
knew each other — all was said in that. 

Cecil was the first to break the silence. He moved 
nearer with a rapid movement, and his hand fell heavily 
on the other’s shoulder. 

“Have you lived stainlessly since V 9 


516 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


The question was stern as the demand of a judge. His 
brother shuddered beneath this touch, and covered his face 
with his hands. 

“God is my witness, yes! But you — you — they said 
that you were dead !” * * * * 

Cecil’s hand fell from his shoulder. There was that in 
the words which smote him more cruelly than any Arab 
steel could have done ; there was the accent of regret. 

“ I am dead,” he said simply, “ dead to the world and 
you.” 

He who bore the title of Kovallieu covered his face. 

“ How have you lived ?” he whispered hoarsely. 

“ Honorably. Let that suffice. And you ?” 

The other looked up at him with a piteous appeal — the 
old timorous, terrified appeal that had been so often seen 
on the boy’s face, strangely returning on the gracious and 
mature beauty of the man. 

“ In honor too, I swear ! That was my first disgrace, 
and my last. You bore the weight of my shame ? Good 
God, what can I say ? Such nobility, such sacrifice ” 

He would have said enough, more than enough, to satisfy 
the one who had lost all for his sake, had there but been 
once in his voice no fear , but only love. As it was, that 
which he still thought of was himself alone. While 
crushed with the weight of his brother’s surpassing gener- 
osity, he still was filled with only one thought that burned 
through the darkness of his bewildered horror, and that 
thought was his own jeopardy. Even in the very first 
hours of his knowledge that the man whom he had believed 
dead was living, living and bearing the burden of the guilt 
he should have borne, what he was filled with was the im- 
minence of his own peril. 

Cecil stood in silence looking at him. He saw the boy- 
ish loveliness he remembered so well altered into the 
stronger and fuller beauty of the man. He saw that life had 
gone softly, smoothly, joyously, with this weak and femi- 
nine nature ; and that, in the absence of temptation to evil, 
its career had been fair and straight in the sight of the 
world. He saw that his brother had been, in one word, 
happy. He saw that happiness had done for this character 
what adversity had done for his own. He saw that by it 


“JE VOUS ACHATE YOTRE VIE.” 


51T 


had been saved a temperament that calamity would have 
wrecked. He stood and looked at him, but he spoke not 
one word ; whatever he felt, he restrained from all expres- 
sion. 

The younger man still hid his face upon his hands, as if, 
even in those pale gray moonbeams, he shunned the light 
that was abo.ut him. 

“ We believed you were dead,” he murmured, wildly. 
“ They said so ; there seemed every proof. But when 1 
saw you yesterday, I knew you — I knew you, though you 
passed me as a stranger. I stayed on here ; they told me 
you would return. God ! what agony this day and night, 
have been !” 

Cecil was silent still ; he knew that this agony had been 
the dread lest he should be living. 

There were many emotions at war in him — scorn, and 
pity, and wounded love, and pride too proud to sue for a 
gratitude denied, or quote a sacrifice that was almost with- 
out parallel in generosity, all held him speechless. To 
overwhelm the sinner before him with reproaches, to count 
and claim the immeasurable debts due to him, to upbraid 
and to revile the wretched weakness that had left the soil 
of a guilt not his own to rest upon him — to do aught of 
this was not in him. Long ago he had accepted the weight 
of an alien crime, and borne it as his own ; to undo now 
all that he had done in the past, to fling out to ruin now 
the one whom he had saved at such a cost, to turn, after 
twelve years, and forsake the man, all coward though he 
was, whom he had shielded for so long — this was not pos- 
sible to him. Though it would be but his own birthright 
that he would demand, his own justification that he would 
establish, it would have seemed to him like a treacherous and 
craven thing. No matter that the one for whom the sacrifice 
had been made was unworthy of it, he held that every law of 
honor and justice forbade him now to abandon his brother, 
and yield him up to the retribution of his early fault. It 
might have been a folly in the first instance, it might even 
have been a madness, that choice of standing in his brother's 
place to receive the shame of his brother’s action ; but it 
had been done so long before — done on the spur of gen- 
erous affection, and actuated by the strange hazard that 

44 


518 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


made the keeping of a woman’s secret demand the same 
reticence which also saved the young lad’s name ; to draw 
back from it now would have been a cowardice impossible 
to his nature. 

All seemed uttered, without words, by their gaze at one 
another. He could not speak with tenderness to this 
craven who had been false to the fair repute of their name: 
— and he would not speak with harshness. ’ He felt too 
sick at heart, too weary, too filled with pain, to ask aught 
of his brother’s life ; it had been saved from temptation, 
and, therefore saved from evil ; that knowledge sufficed to 
him. 

The younger man stood half stupefied, half maddened. 
In the many years that had passed by, although his char- 
acter had not changed, his position had altered greatly ; 
and in the last few months he had enjoyed all the power 
that wealth and independence and the accession to his title 
could bestow. He felt some dull, hot, angered sense of 
wrong done to him by the fact that the rightful heir of 
them still lived ; some chafing, ingrate, and unreasoning 
impatience with the savior of his whole existence ; some 
bitter pangs of conscience that he would be baser yet, 
base beyond all baseness, to remain in his elder’s place, 
and accept this sacrifice still, while knowing now the 
truth. 

“Bertie — Bertie 1” he stammered, in hurried appeal 

and the name of his youth touched the hearer of it strangely, 
making him for the moment forget all save that he looked 
once more upon one of his own race — “on my soul, I 
never doubted that the story of your death was true. No 
one did. All the world believed it. If I had known you 
lived, I would have said that you were innocent ; I would 
— I would have told them how I forged your friend’s name 
and your own when I was so desperate that I scarce knew 
what I did. But they said that you were killed, and I 
thought then — then — it was not worth while ; it would have 
broken my father’s heart. God help me ! I was a coward P 

He spoke the truth; he was a coward; he had ever been 
one. . Herein lay the whole story of his fall, his weakness, 
his sin, and his ingratitude. Cecil knew that never wili 
gratitude exist where craven selfishness holds reign ; yet 


“JE VOUS ACHATE VOTRE VIE.” 


519 


*here was an infinite pity mingled with the scorn that 
moved him. After the years of bitter endurance he had 
passed, the heroic endurance he had witnessed, the hard 
and unending miseries that he had learned to take as his 
daily portion, this feebleness and fear roused his wonder- 
ing compassion almost as a woman’s weakness would have 
done. Still he never answered ; the hatred of the stain 
that had been brought upon their name by his brother’s 
deed (stain none the less dark, in his sight, because hidden 
from the world), his revulsion from this man, who was the 
only creature of their race who ever had turned poltroon, 
the thousand remembrances of childhood that uprose be- 
fore him, the irresistible yearning for some word from the 
other’s lips that should tell of some lingering trace in him 
of the old love strong enough to kill, for the moment at 
least, the selfish horror of personal peril — all these kept 
him silent. 

His brother misinterpreted that silence. 

“ I am in your power — utterly in your power,” he moaned 
in his fear. “ I stand in your place ; I bear your title ; 
you know that our father and our brother are dead ? All 
’jhat I have inherited is yours — do you know that, since 
you have never claimed it ?” 

“ I know it.” 

“And you have never come forward to take your rights ?” 

“ What I did not do to clear my own honor, I was not 
likely to do merely to hold a title.” 

The meaning of his answer drifted beyond the ear on 
which his words fell ; it was too high to be comprehended 
by the lower nature. The man who lived in prosperity 
and peace, and in the smile of the world, and the purple 
of power, looked bewildered at the man who led the sim- 
ple, necessitous, perilous, semi-barbaric existence of an 
Arab*Franco soldier. 

“ But — great Heaven ! — this life of yours ? It must be 
wretchedness ?” 

“ Perhaps. It has at least no disgrace in it.” 

The reply had the only sternness of contempt that he had 
suffered himself to show. It stung down to his listener’s 
soul. 

“ Ho no !” he murmured. “ You are happier than I. 


520 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


You have no remorse to bear ! And yet — to tell the wcrld 
that I am guilty ! ” 

“You need never tell it; I shall not.” 

He spoke quite quietly, quite patiently. Yet he well 
knew, and had well weighed, all he surrendered in that 
promise — the promise to condemn himself to a barren and 
hopeless fate forever. 

“ You will not ?” 

The question died almost inaudible on his dry, parched 
tongue. The one passion of fear upon him was for him- 
self ; even in that moment of supplication his disordered 
thoughts hovered wildly over the chances of whether, if 
his elder brother even now asserted his innocence and 
claimed his birthright, the world and its judges would ever 
believe him. 

Cecil for awhile again was silent, standing there by the 
newly made grave of the soldier who had been faithful as 
those of his own race and of his own order never had been. 
His heart was full. The ingratitude and the self-absorp- 
tion of this life for which his own had been destroyed 
smote him with a fearful suffering. And only a few hours 
before he had looked once more on the face of the beloved 
friend of his youth ; — a deadlier sacrifice than to lay down 
wealth, and name, and heritage, and the world’s love, was 
to live on leaving that one comrade of his early days to 
believe him dead after a deed of shame. 

His brother sank down on the mound of freshly flung 
earth, sinking his head upon his arms with a low moan. 
Time had not changed him greatly ; it had merely made 
him more intensely desirous of the pleasures and the powers 
of life, more intensely abhorrent of pain, of censure, of the 
contempt of the world. As, to escape these in his boy- 
hood, he had stooped to any degradation, so, to escape 
them in his manhood, he was capable of descending to any 
falsehood or any weakness. His was one of those natures 
which, having no love of evil for evil’s sake, still embrace 
any form of evil which may save them from the penalty of 
their own weakness. Now, thus meeting one whom for 
twelve years he had believed must rise from the tomb 
itself to reproach or to accuse him, unstrung his every 
nerve, and left him with only one consciousness — the de- 
sire at all costs to be saved. 


“JE VOUS ACHATE YOTRE VIE.” 521 

Cecil’s eyes rested on him with a strange melancholy 
pity: he had loved his brother as a youth — loved him well 
enough to take and bear a heavy burden of disgrace in his 
stead. The old love was not dead ; but stronger than 
itself was his hatred of the shame that had touched their 
race by the wretched crime that had driven him into exile, 
and his wondering scorn for the feeble and self-engrossed 
character that had lived contentedly under false colors, 
and with a hidden blot screened by a fictitious semblance 
of honor. He could not linger with him ; he did not know 
how to support the intolerable pain that oppressed him in 
the presence of the only living creature of his race ; he 
could not answer for himself what passionate and wither- 
ing words might not escape him ; every instant of their 
interview was a horrible temptation to him — the tempta- 
tion to demand from this coward his own justification be- 
fore the world — the temptation to seize out of these un- 
worthy hands his birthright and his due. 

But the temptation, sweet, insidious, intense, strengthened 
by the strength of right, and well-nigh overwhelming with 
all its fair delicious promise for the future, did not con- 
quer him. What resisted it was his own simple instinct of 
justice; an instinct too straight and true eithec to yield to 
self-pity or to passionate desire — justice which made him 
feel that, since he had chosen to save this weakling once 
for their lost mother’s sake, he was bound forever not to 
repent nor to retract. He gazed awhile longer, silently, 
at the younger man, who sat still rocking himself wearily 
to and fro on the loose earth of the freshly filled grave. 
Then he went and laid his hand on his brother’s shoulder: 
the other started and trembled ; he remembered that touch 
in days of old. 

“Do not fear me,” he said, gently and very gravely. 
“I have kept your secret twelve years; I will keep it still. 
Be happy — be as happy as you can. All I bid of you in 
return is so to live that in your future your past shall be 
redeemed.” 

The words of the saint to the thief, 11 Je vous achete 
votre vie” were not more merciful, not more noble, than 
the words with which he purchased, at the sacrifice of his 
own life, the redemption of his brother’s. The other 
44 * 


522 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


looked at him with a look that was half of terror — terror 
at the magnitude of this ransom that was given to save 
him from the bondage of evil. 

“My God ! You cannot mean it ! And you ?” 

“ I shall lead the life fittest for me : I am content in it. 
It is enough. ” 

The answer was very calm, but it choked him in its 
utterance. Before his memory rose one fair, proud face. 
“ Content 1” Ah, Heaven! — it was the only lie that had 
ever passed his lips. 

His hand lay still upon his brother’s shoulder, leaning 
more heavily there, in the silence that brooded over the 
hushed plains. 

“Let us part now, and forever. Leave Algeria at once. 
That is all I ask.” 

Then, without another word that could add reproach or 
seek for gratitude, he turned and went away over the 
great dim level of the African waste, while the man whom 
he had saved sat as in stupor, gazing at the brown shadows, 
and the sleeping herds, and the falling stars that ran across 
the sky, and doubting whether the voice he had heard and 
the face upon which he had looked were not the visions of 
a waking dream. 


CHAPTER XXXII. 

“ VENETIA.” 

How that night was spent Cecil could never recall in 
full. Vague memories remained with him of wandering 
over the shadowy country, of seeking by bodily fatigue to 
kill the thoughts rising in him, of drinking at a little 
water-channel in the rocks as thirstily as some driven 
deer, of flinging himself down at length, worn out, to sleep 
under the hanging brow of a mighty wall of rock; of 
waking when the dawn was reddening the east with the 
brown plains around him, and far away under a knot of 


“VENETIA.” 523 

palms was a goatherd with his flock like an idyl from the 
old pastoral life of Syria. He stood looking at the light 
which heralded the sun, with some indefinite sense of heavy 
loss, of fresh calamity, upon him. It was only slowly that 
he remembered all. Years seemed to have been pressed 
into the three nights and days since he had sat by the 
bivouac-fire, listening to the fiery words of the little Friend 
of the Flag. 

The full consciousness of all that he had surrendered in 
yielding up afresh his heritage rolled in on his memory 
like the wave of some heavy sea that sweeps down all 
before it. 

When that tear-blotted and miserable letter had reached 
him in the green alleys of the Stephanien, and confessed 
to him that his brother had relied on the personal likeness 
between them and the similarity of their handwriting to 
pass off as his the bill in which his own name and that of 
his friend was forged, no thought had crossed him to take 
upon himself the lad’s sin. It had only been when, brought 
under the charge, he must, to clear himself, have at once 
accused the boy, and have betrayed the woman whose re- 
putation was in his keeping, that rather by generous im- 
pulse than by studied intention he had taken up the burden 
that he had now carried for so long. Whether or no the 
money-lenders had been themselves in reality deceived he 
could never tell ; but it had been certain that, having 
avowed themselves confident of his guilt, they could never 
shift the charge on to his brother in the face of his own 
acceptance of it. So he had saved the youth without pre- 
meditation or reckoning of the cost. And now that the 
full cost was known to him, he had not shrunk back from 
its payment. Yet that payment was one that gave him a 
greater anguish than if he had laid down his life in physical 
martyrdom. 

To go back to the old luxury, and ease, and careless 
peace, to go back to the old fresh fair English woodlands, 
to go back to the power of command and the delight of 
free gifts, to go back to men’s honor, and reverence, and 
high esteem — these would have been sweet enough — sweet 
as food after long famine. But far more than these would 
it have been to go back and take the hand of his friend 


524 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


once more in the old unclouded trust of their youth ; to go 
back, and stand free and blameless among his peers, and 
know that all that man could do to win the heart and the 
soul of a woman he could at his will do to win hers whose 
mere glance of careless pity had sufficed to light his life to 
passion. And he had renounced all this. This was the 
cost: and he had paid it — paid it because the simple, 
natural, inflexible law of justice had demanded it. 

One whom he had once chosen to save he could not 
now have deserted, except by what would have been, in 
his sight, dishonor. Therefore, when the day broke, and 
the memories of the night came with his awakening, he 
knew that his future was without hope — without it as ut- 
terly as was ever that of any captive shut in darkness, and 
silence, and loneliness, in a prison, whose only issue was 
the oubliettes. There is infinite misery in the world, but 
this one misery is rare; or men would perish from the face 
of the earth as though the sun withdrew its light. 

Alone in that dreary scene, beautiful from its vastness 
and its solemnity, but unutterably melancholy, unutter- 
ably oppressive, he also wondered whether he lived or 
dreamed. 

From among the reeds the plovers were rising; over 
the barren rocks the dazzling lizards glided ; afar off 
strayed the goats: that was the only sign of animal ex- 
istence. He had wandered a long way from the caravan- 
serai, and he began to retrace his steps, for his horse was 
there, and although he had received license to take leisure 
in returning, he had no home but the camp, no friends but 
those wild-eyed, leopard-like, ferocious sons of the razzia 
and the slaughter, who would throng around him like a 
pack of dogs, each eager for the first glance, the first word ; 
these companions of his adversity and of his perils, whom 
he had learned to love, with all their vices and all their 
crimes, for sake of the rough, courageous love that they 
could give in answer. 

He moved slowly back over the desolate tracks of land 
stretched between him and th‘e Algerian halting-place. Ho 
had no fear that he would find his brother there He knew 
too well the nature with which he had to deal to hope that 
old affection would so have outweighed present fear that 


" VENETIA.” 


525 


his debtor would have stayed to meet him yet onee more. 
On the impulse of the ungovernable pain which the other’s 
presence had been, he had bidden him leave Africa at 
once; now he almost wished that he had bid him stay. 
There was a weary unsatisfied longing for some touch of 
love or of gratitude from this usurper, whom he had raised 
in his place. He would have been rewarded enough if one 
sign of gladness that he lived had broken through the 
egotism and the stricken fear of the man whom he remem- 
bered as a little golden-headed child, with the hand of 
their dying mother lying in benediction on the fair silken 
curls. 

He had asked no questions. He had gone back to no 
recriminations. He guessed all it needed him to know ; 
and he recoiled from the recital of the existence whose 
happiness was purchased by his own misery, and whose 
dignity was built on sand. His sacrifice had not been in 
vain. Placed out of the reach of temptation, the plastic, 
feminine, unstable character had been without a stain in 
the sight of men ; but it was little better at the core; and 
he wondered, in his suffering, as he went onward through 
the beauty of the young day, whether it had been worth 
the bitter price he had paid to raise this bending reed from 
out the waters which would have broken and swamped it 
at the outset. It grew fair, and free, and flower-crowned 
now, in the midst of a tranquil and sunlit lake; but was it 
of more value than a drifted weed bearing the snake-egg 
hidden at its root ? 

He had come so far out of the ordinary route across the 
plains that it was two hours or more before he saw the dark 
gray square of the caravanserai walls, and to its left that 
single leaning pine growing out of a cleft within the rock 
that overhung the spot where the keenest anguish of all 
his life had known had been encountered and endured — the 
spot which yet, for sake of the one laid to rest there, be- 
neath the somber branches, would be forever dearer to him 
than any other place in the soil of Africa. 

While yet the caravanserai was distant, the piteous cries 
of a mother-goat caught his ear; she was bleating beside a 
water-course, into which her kid of that spring had fallen, 
and whose rapid swell, filled by the recent storm, was too 


526 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


strong for the young creature. Absorbed as h-e was in his 
own thoughts, the cry reached him and drew him to the 
spot; it was not in him willingly to let any living thing 
suffer, and he was always gentle to all animals. He stooped, 
and, with some little difficulty, rescued the little goat for 
its delighted dam. 

As he bent over the water, he saw something glitter 
beneath it; he caught it in his hand and brought it up ; it 
was the broken half of a chain of gold, with a jewel in each 
link. He changed color as he saw it; he remembered it as 
one that Venctia Corona had worn on the morning that 
he had been admitted to her. It was of peculiar work- 
manship, and he recognized it at once. He stood with the 
toy in his hand, looking long at the shining links, with 
their flashes of precious stones. They seemed to have 
voices that spoke to him of her about whose beautiful 
white throat they had been woven — voices that whispered 
incessantly in his ear, “Take up your birthright, and you 
will be free to sue to her at least, if not to win her.” No 
golden and jeweled plaything ever tempted a starving man 
to theft as this tempted him now to break the pledge he 
had just given. 

His birthright I He longed for it for this woman’s sake 
— for the sake, at least, of the right to stand before her as 
an equal, and to risk his chance with others who sought 
her smile, — as he had never done for any other thing 
which, with that heritage, would have become his. Yet 
he knew that, even were he to be false to his word, and go 
forward and claim his right, he would never be able to 
prove his innocence; he would never hope to make the 
world believe him unless the real criminal made that con- 
fession which he held himself forbidden, by his own past 
action, ever to extort. 

He gazed long at the broken costly toy, while his heart 
ached with a cruel pang; then he placed it in safety in the 
little blue enamel box, beside the ring which Cigarette had 
Hung back to him, and went onward to the caravanserai. 
She was no longer there, in all probability; but the lost 
bagatelle would give him, some time or another, a plea on 
which to enter her presence. It was a pleasure to him to 
know that; — though he knew also that every added mo- 


“ VENETIA.” 527 

ment, spent under the sweet sovereignty of her glance wag 
so much added pain, so much added folly, to the dream- 
like and baseless passion with which she had inspired him. 

The trifling incident of the goat’s rescue and the chain’s 
trouvaille, slight as they were, still were of service to him. 
They called him back from the past to the present ; they 
broke the stupor of suffering that had fastened on him ; 
they recalled him to the actual world about him in which 
he had to fulfill his duties as a trooper of France. 

It was almost noon when, under the sun - scorched 
branches of the pine that stretched its somber fans up 
against the glittering azure of the morning skies, he ap- 
proached the gates of the Algerine house-of-call — a study 
for the color of Gerome, with the pearly gray of its stone 
tints, and the pigeons wheeling above its corner towers, 
while under the arch of its entrance a string of mules, 
maize-laden, were guided ; and on its bench sat a French 
fantassin, singing gayly songs of Paris while he cut open a 
yellow gourd. 

Cecil went within, and bathed, and dressed, and drank 
some of the thin cool wine that found its way hither in the 
wake of the French army. Then he sat down for awhile 
at one of the square cabin-like holes which served for case- 
ments in the tower he occupied, and, looking out into the 
court, tried to shape his thoughts and plan his course. As 
a soldier he had no freedom, no will of his own, save for 
this extra twelve or twenty-four hours which they had al- 
lowed him for leisure in his return journey. He was 
obliged to go back to his camp, and there, he knew, he 
might again encounter one whose tender memories would 
be as quick to recognize him as the craven dread of his 
brother had been. He had always feared this ordeal, 
although the arduous service in which his chief years in 
Africa had been spent, and the remote expeditions on 
which he had always been employed, had partially removed 
him from the ever-present danger of such recognition until 
now. And now he felt that if once the brave kind eyes of 
his old friend should meet his own, concealment would bo 
no longer possible, yet, for sake of that promise he had 
sworn in the past night, it must be maintained at every 
hazard, every cost. Yacantly he sat and watched the play 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


628 

of the sunshine in the prismatic water of the court-yard 
fountain, and the splashing, and the pluming, and the mur- 
muring of the doves and pigeons on its edge. He felt 
meshed in a net from which there was no escape — none — 
unless, on his homeward passage, a thrust of Arab steel 
should give him liberty. 

The trampling of horses on the pavement below roused 
his attention. A thrill of hope went through him that his 
brother might have lingering conscience, latent love enough, 
to have made him refuse to obey the bidding to leave Africa. 
He rose and leaned out. Amid the little throng of riding- 
horses, grooms, and attendants who made an open way 
through the polyglot crowd of an Algerian caravanserai 
at noon, he saw the one dazzling face of which he had so 
lately dreamed by the water-freshet in the plains. It was 
but a moment’s glance, for she had already dismounted 
from her mare, and was passing within with two other 
ladies of her party ; but in that one glance he knew her. 
His discovery of the chain gave him a plea to seek her ; — 
should he avail himself of it? He hesitated awhile; it 
would be safest, wisest, best, to deliver up the trinket to 
lier courier, and pass on his way without another look at 
that beauty which could never be his, which could never 
lighten for him even with the smile that a woman may give 
her equal or her friend. She could never be aught to him 
save one more memory of pain, save one remembrance the 
more to embitter the career which not even hope would 
ever illumine. He knew that it was only madness to go 
into her presence, and feed, with the cadence of her voice, 
the gold light of her hair, the grace and graciousness of 
her every movement, the love which she would deem such 
intolerable insult, that, did he ever speak it, she would 
order her people to drive him from her like a chidden 
hound. He knew that ; but he longed to indulge the mad- 
ness despite it.; and he did so. He went down into the 
court below, and found her suite. 

“ Tell your mistress that I, Louis Victor, have some 
jewels which belong to her, and ask her permission to re- 
store them to her hands,” he said to one of her equerries. 

“Give them to me, if you have picked them up,” said 
the man, putting out his hand for them. 


“VENETIA.” 529 

Cecil closed his own upon them : 

“Go and do as I bid you.” 

The equerry paused, doubtful whether or no to resist 
the tone and the words. A Frenchman’s respect for the 
military uniform prevailed; he went within. 

In the best chamber of the caravanserai, Yenetia Co- 
rona was sitting, listless in the heat, when her attendant 
entered. The grandes dames who were her companions 
in their tour through the seat of war, were gone to their 
siesta. She was alone, with a scarlet burnous thrown 
about her, and upon her all the languor and idleness com- 
mon to the noontide, which was still very warm, though, 
in the autumn, the nights were so icily cold on the exposed 
level of the plains. She was lost in thought, moreover. 
She had heard, the day before, a story that had touched 
her — of a soldier who had been slain crossing the plains, 
and had been brought, through the hurricane and the sand- 
otorm, at every risk, by his comrade, who had chosen to 
endure all peril and wretchedness rather than leave the 
dead body to the vultures and the kites. It was a name- 
less story to her — the story of two obscure troopers, who, 
for aught she knew, might have been two of the riotous 
and savage brigands that were common in the Army of 
Africa. But the loyalty and the love shown in it had 
moved her; and to the woman whose life had been cloud- 
less and cradled in ease from her birth, there was that in 
the suffering and the sacrifice which the anecdote suggested, 
that had at once the fascination of the unknown, and ths 
pathos of a life so far removed from her, so little dreamed 
of by her, that all its coarser cruelty was hidden, while 
only its unutterable sadness and courage remained before 
her sight. 

Had she, could she, ever have seen it in its realities, 
watched and read and understood it, she would have been 
too intensely revolted to have perceived the actual latent no- 
bility possible in such an existence ; as it was, she heard but 
of it in such words as alone could meet the ear of a great 
lady, she gazed at it only in pity from a far distant "height, 
and its terrible tragedy had solemnity and beauty for her. 

When her servant approached her now with Cecil’s mes- 
sage, she hesitated some few moments in surprise. She 
2 1 45 


530 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


had not known that he was in her vicinity ; the story she 
had heard had been simply of two unnamed Chasseurs 
d’Afrique, and he himself might have fallen on the field 
weeks before, for aught that she had heard of him. Some 
stray rumors of his defense of the encampment of Zaraila, 
and of the fine prowess shown in his last charge, alone had 
drifted to her. He was but a trooper ; and he fought in 
Africa. The world had no concern with him, save the 
miniature world of his own regiment. 

She hesitated some moments ; then gave the required 
permission. “ He has once been a gentleman : it would 
be cruel to wound him,” thought the imperial beauty, who 
would have refused a prince or neglected a duke with chill 
indifference, but who was too generous to risk the sem- 
blance of humiliation to the man who could never approach 
her save upon such sufferance as was in itself mortification 
to one whose pride survived his fallen fortunes. 

Moreover, the interest he had succeeded in awakening 
in her, the mingling of pity and of respect that his words 
and his bearing had aroused, was not extinct; had, indeed, 
only been strengthened by the vague stories that had of 
late floated to her of the day of Zaraila; of the day of 
smoke and steel and carnage, of war in its grandest yet its 
most frightful shape, of the darkness of death which the 
courage of human souls had power to illumine as the rays 
of the sun the tempest-cloud. Something more like quick- 
ened and pleasured expectation than any one among her 
many lovers had ever had power to rouse, moved her as 
she heard of the presence of the man who, in that day, had 
saved the honor of his Flag. She came of a heroic race ; 
she had heroic blood in her ; and heroism, physical and 
moral, won her regard as no other quality could ever do. 
A man capable of daring greatly, and of suffering silently, 
was the only man who could ever hope to hold her thoughts. 

The room was darkened from the piercing light without; 
and in its gloom, as he was ushered in, the scarlet of her 
cashmere and the gleam of her fair hair was all that, for 
the moment, he could see. He bowed very low that he 
might get his calmness back before he looked at her ; and 
her voice in its lingering music came od his ear. 

“ You have found my chain, I think ? I lost it in riding 


“VENETIA.” 531 

yesterday. I am greatly indebted to you for taking care 
of it.” 

She felt that she could only thank, as she would have 
thanked an equal who should have done her this sort of 
slight service, the man who had brought to her the gold 
pieces with which his Colonel had insulted him. 

“ It is I, madame, who am the debtor of so happy an 
accident.” 

His words were very low, and his voice shook a little 
over them ; he was thinking not of the jeweled toy that he 
came here to restore, but of the inheritance that had passed 
away from him forever, and which, possessed, would have 
given him the title to seek what his own efforts could do 
to wake a look of tenderness in those proud eyes which 
men ever called so cold, but which he felt might still soften, 
and change, and grow dark with the thoughts and the 
passions of love, if the soul that gazed through them were 
but once stirred from its repose. 

“Your chain is here, madame, though broken, I regret 
to see,” he continued, as he took the little box from his 
coat and handed it to her. She took it, and thanked him, 
without, for the moment, opening the enamel case as she 
motioned him to a seat at a little distance from her own. 

“You have been in terrible scenes since I saw you last,” 
she continued. “ The story of Zaraila reached us. Surely 
they cannot refuse you the reward of your service now ? v 

“It will make little difference, madame, whether they 
do or not.” 

“ Little difference ! How is that ?” 

“ To my own fate, I meant. Whether I be a captain or 
a corporal cannot alter ” 

He paused ; he dreaded lest the words should escape 
him which should reveal to her that which she would re- 
gard as such intolerable offense, such insolent indignity, 
when felt for her by a soldier in the grade he held. 

“ No ? Yet such recognition is usually the ambition of 
every military life.” 

A very weary smile passed over his face. 

“ I have no ambition, madame. Or, if I have, it is not 
a pair of epaulettes that will content it.” 

She understood him ; she comprehended the bitter mock- 


532 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


ery that the tawdry, meretricions rewards of regimental 
decoration seemed to the man who had waited to die at 
Zaraila as patiently and as grandly as the Old Guard at 
Waterloo. 

“ I understand I The rewards are pitifully dispropor- 
tionate to the services in any army. Yet how magnifi- 
cently you and your men, as I have been told, held your 
ground all through that fearful day 1” 

“We did our duty — nothing more.” 

“ Well ! is not that the rarest thing among men ?” 

“ Not among soldiers, madame.” 

“ Then you think that every trooper in a regiment is 
actuated by the finest and most impersonal sentiment that 
can actuate human beings !” 

“ I will not say that. Poor wretches 1 they are de- 
graded enough, too often. But I believe that more or less 
in every good soldier, even when he is utterly unconscious 
of it, is an impersonal love for the honor of his Flag, an 
uncalculating instinct to do his best for the reputation of 
his corps. We are called human machines ; we are so, 
since we move by no will of our own ; but the lowest among 
us will at times be propelled by one single impulse — a de- 
sire to die greatly. It is all that is left to most of us to do.” 

She looked at him with that old look which he had seen 
once or twice before in her, of pity, respect, sympathy, and 
wonder, all in one. He spoke to her as he had never 
spoken to any living being. The grave, quiet, listless im- 
passiveness that still was habitual with him — relic of the 
old habits of his former life — was very rarely broken, for 
his real nature or his real thoughts to be seen beneath it. 
But she, so far removed from him by position and by cir- 
cumstance, and distant with him as a great lady could not 
but be with a soldier of whose antecedents and whose 
character she knew nothing, gave him sympathy, a sym- 
pathy that was sweet and rather felt than uttered ; and it 
was like balm to a wound, like sweet melodies on a weary 
ear, to the man who had carried his secret so silently and 
so long, without one to know his burden or to soothe his 
pain. 

“ Yes,” she said thoughtfully, while over the brilliancy 
of her face there passed a shadow. “ There must be in- 


“VENETIA.” 533 

finite nobility among these men, who live without hope 

live only to die. That soldier, a day or two ago, who 
brought his dead comrade through the hurricane, risk- 
ing his own death rather than leave the body to the 
carrion-birds — you have heard of him ? What tender- 
ness, what greatness there must have been in that poor 
fellow’s heart 1” 

“ Oh, no ! That was nothing.” 

“Nothing! They have told me he came every inch of 
the way in danger of the Arabs’ shot and steel. He had 
suffered so much to bring the body safe across the plains, 
he fell down insensible on his entrance here.” 

“You set too much store on it. I owed him a debt far 
greater than any act like that could ever repay.” 

“ You! Was it you ?” 

“Yes, madame. He who perished had a thousandfold 
more of such nobility as you have praised than I.” 

“Ah! Tell me of him,” she said simply; but he saw 
that the lustrous eyes bent on him had a grave, sweet sad- 
ness in them that was more precious and more pitiful than 
a million utterances of regret could ever have been. 

Those belied her much who said that she was heartless ; 
though grief had never touched her, she could feel keenly 
the grief of other lives. He obeyed her bidding now, and 
told her, in brief words, the story, which had a profound 
pathos spoken there, where without through the oval un- 
glazed casement in the distance there was seen the tall dark 
leaning pine that overhung the grave of yesternight — the 
story over which his voice oftentimes fell with the hush of 
a cruel pain in it, and which he could have related to no 
other save herself. It had an intense melancholy and a 
strange beauty in its brevity and its simplicity, told in that 
gaunt, still, darkened chamber of the caravanserai, with 
the gray gloom of its stone walls around, and the rays of 
the golden sunlight from without straying in to touch the 
glistening hair of the proud head that bent forward to 
listen to the recital. Her face grew paler as she heard ; 
and a mist was over the radiance of her azure eyes ; that 
death in the loneliness of the plains moved her deeply with 
the grand simplicity of its unconscious heroism. And, 
though he spoke little of himself, she felt, with all the divi- 


534 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


nation of a woman’s sympathies, how he who told her this 
thing had suffered by it — suffered far more than the com- 
rade whom he had laid down in the grave where, far off in 
the noonday warmth, the young goats were at rest on the 
sod. When he ceased, there was a long silence ; he had 
lost even the memory of her in the memory of the death 
that he had painted to her ; and she was moved with that 
wondering pain, that emotion, half dread and half regret, 
with which the contemplation of calamities that have never 
touched, and that can never touch them, will move women 
far more callous, far more world-chilled than herself. 

In the silence, her hands toyed listlessly with the enamel 
bonbonni&re, whose silver had lost all its bright enamel- 
ing, and was dinted and dulled till it looked no more than 
lead. The lid came off at her touch as she musingly moved 
it round and round ; the chain and the ring fell into her 
lap ; the lid remained in her hand, its interior unspoiled 
and studded in its center with one name in turquoise let- 
ters — Y enetia. 

She started as the word caught her eye and broke her 
reverie ; the color came warmer into her cheek; she looked 
closer and closer at the box, then, with a rapid movement, 
turned her head and gazed at her companion. 

“ How did you obtain this ?” 

“ The chain, madame ? It had fallen in the water. ” 

“ The chain 1 No ! the box !” 

He looked at her in surprise. 

“ It was given me very long ago.” 

“ And by whom ?” 

“By a young child, madame.” 

Her lips, parted slightly, the flush on her cheeks deep- 
ened ; the beautiful face, which the Roman sculptor had 
said only wanted tenderness to make it perfect, changed, 
moved, was quickened with a thousand shadows of thought. 

“ The box is mine ! I gave it I And you ?” 

He rose to his feet, and stood entranced before her, 
breathless and mute. 

“And you ?” she repeated. 

He was silent still, gazing at her. He knew her now 

how had he been so blind as never to guess the truth be- 
fore, as never to know that those imperial eyes and that 


“VENETIA.” 535 

diadem of golden hair could belong alone but to the wo- 
men of one race ? 

“ And you ?” she cried once more, while she stretched 
her hand out to him. “ And you — you are Philip’s friend ? 
you are Bertie Cecil ?” 

Silently he bowed his head ; not even for his brother’s 
sake, or for sake of his pledged word, could he have lied 
to her. 

But her outstretched hands he would not see, he would 
not take. The shadow of an imputed crime was stretched 
between them. 

“Petite Reine J” he murmured. “Ah, God! how could 
I be so blind ?” 

She grew very pale as she sank back again upon the 
couch from which she had risen. It seemed to her as 
though a thousand years had drifted by since she had stood 
beside this man under the summer leaves of the Stepha- 
nien, and he had kissed her childish lips, and thanked her 
for her loving gift. And now — they had met thus ! 

He said nothing. He stood paralyzed, gazing at her. 
There had been no added bitterness needed in the cup 
which he drank for his brother’s sake, yet this bitterness 
surpassed all other: it seemed beyond his strength to leave 
her in the belief that he was guilty. She in whom all fair 
and gracious things were met, she who was linked by her 
race to his past and his youth ; she whose clear eyes iu 
her childhood had looked upon him in that first hour of 
the agony that he had suffered then, and still suffered on, 
in the cause of a coward and an ingrate. 

She was pale still ; and her eyes were fixed on him 
with a gaze that recalled to him the look with which 
“Petite Heine” had promised that summer day to keep his 
secret, and tell none of that misery of which she had been 
witness. 

“ They thought that you were dead,” she said at length, 
while her voice sank very low. “ Why have you lived like 
this?” 

He made no answer. 

“ It was cruel to Philip,” she went on, while her voice 
snll shook. “ Child though I was, I remember his passion 
of grief when the news came that you had lost your life. 


536 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


He has never forgotten you. So often now he will still 
speak of you! He is in your camp. We are traveling 
together. He will be here this evening. What delight it 
will give him to know his dearest friend is living ! But 
why — why — have kept him ignorant, if you were lost to 
all the world beside 

Still he answered her nothing. The truth he could not 
tell; the lie he would not. She paused, waiting reply. 
Receiving none, she spoke once more, her words full of 
that exquisite softness which was far more beautiful in her 
than in women less tranquil, less chill, and less negligent 
in ordinary moments.' 

“Mr. Cecil, I divined rightly 1 I knew that you were 
far higher than your grade in Africa; I felt that in all 
things, save in some accident of position, we were equals. 
But why have you condemned yourself to this misery? 
Your life is brave, is noble, but it must be a constant 
torture to such as you ? I remember well what you were 
— so well, that I wonder we have never recognized each 
other before now. The existence you lead in Algeria 
must be very terrible to you, though it is greater, in truth, 
than your old years of indolence ?” 

He sank down beside her on a low seat, and bowed his 
head on his hands for some moments. He knew that he 
must leave this woman whom he loved, and who knew him 
now as one whom in her childhood she had seen caressed 
and welcomed by all her race, to hold him guilty of this 
wretched, mean, and fraudulent thing, under whose charge 
he had quited her country. Great dews of intense pain 
gathered on his forehead ; his whole mind, and heart, and 
soul revolted against this brand of a guilt not his own that 
was stamped on him ; he could have cried out to her the 
truth in all the eloquence of a breaking heart. 

But he knew that his lips had been sealed by his own 
choice forever ; and the old habits of his early life were 
strong upon him still. He lifted his head and spoke 
gently, and very quietly, though she caught the tremor that 
shook through the words : 

“ Do not let us speak. of myself. You see what my life 
is ; there is no more to be said. Tell me rather of your 
own story — you are no longer the Lady Yenetia? \ T ou 
have been wedded and widowed, they say ?” 


“VENETIA.” 537 

** The wife of an hour — yes ! But it is of yourself that 
I would hear. Why have left the world, and, above all, 
why have left us, to think you dead ? I was not so young 
when we last saw you, but that I remember well how all 
my people loved you.” 

Had she been kept in ignorance of the accusation be- 
neath which his flight had been made ? He began to 
think so. It was possible. She had been so young a 
child when he had left for Africa ; then the story was proba- 
bly withheld from reaching her, and now, what memory 
had the world to give a man whose requiem it had said 
twelve long years before ? In all likelihood she had never 
heard his name, save from her brother’s lips, that had been 
silent on the shame of his old comrade. 

“ Leave my life alone, for God’s sake 1” he said, passion- 
ately. “Tell me of your own — tell me, above all, of his. 
He loved me, you say ? — 0 Heaven ! he did. Better than 
any creature that ever breathed ; save the man whose 
grave lies yonder.” 

“ He does so still,” she answered, eagerly ; “ Philip’s is 
not a heart that forgets. It is a heart of gold, and the 
name of his earliest friend is graven on it as deeply now as 
ever. He thinks you dead ; to-night will be the happiest 
hour he has ever known when he shall meet you here.” , 

He rose hastily, and moved thrice to and fro the narrow 
floor whose rugged earth had been covered with furs and 
rugs lest it should strike a chill to her as she passed over 
it: the torture grew unsupportable to him. And yet, it 
had so much of sweetness that he was powerless to end it 
— sweetness in the knowledge that she knew him now her 
equal, at least by birth; in the change that it had made 
in her voice and her glance, while the first grew tender 
with olden memories, and the last had the smile of friend- 
ship ; in the closeness of the remembrances that seemed to 
draw and bind them together ; in the swift sense that in 
an instant, by the utterance of a name, the ex-barrier of 
caste which had been between them had fallen now and 
forever. 

She watched him with grave. musing eyes. She was 
moved, startled, softened to a profound pity for him, and 
filled with a wondering of regret; yet a strong emotion of 


538 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


relief, of pleasure, rose above these. She had never for- 
gotten the man to whom, in her childish innocence, sho 
had brought the gifts of her golden store ; she was glad 
that he lived, though he lived thus ; glad with a quicker, 
warmer, more vivid emotion than any that had ever occu- 
pied her for any man living or dead except her brother. 
The interest she had vaguely felt in a stranger’s fortunes, 
and which she had driven contemptuously away as un- 
worthy of her harboring, was justified for one whom her 
people had known and valued while she had been in her 
infancy, and of whom she had never heard from her 
brother’s lips aught except constant regret and imperisha- 
ble attachment. For it was true, as Cecil divined, that 
the dark cloud under which his memory had passed to all 
in England had never been seen by her eyes, from which, 
in childhood, it had been screened, and, in womanhood, 
withheld, because his name had been absolutely forgotten 
by all save the Seraph, to whom it had been fraught with 
too much pain for its utterance to be ever voluntary. 

“What is it you fear from Philip?” she asked him, at 
last, when she had waited vainly for him to break the 
silence. “You can remember him but ill if you think that 
there will be anything in his heart save joy when he shall 
know that you are living. You little dream how dear your 
memory is to him ” 

He paused before her abruptly. 

“Hush, hush ! or you will kill me ! Why ! — three nights 
ago I fled the camp as men flee pestilence, because I saw 
his face in the light of the bivouac-fire and dreaded that he 
should so see mine 1” 

She gazed at him in troubled amaze; there was that in 
the passionate agitation of this man who had been serene 
through so much danger, and unmoved beneath so much 
disaster, that startled and bewildered her. 

“You fled from Philip? Ah! how you must wrong 
him 1 What will it matter to him whether you be prince 
or trooper, wear a peer’s robes or a soldier’s uniform ? 

His friendship never yet was given to externals. But 

stay! — that reminds me of your inheritance. Do you 
know that Lord Royallieu is dead? that your younger 
brother bears the title, thinking you perished at Mar- 


“VENETIA.” 539 

seilles? He was here with me yesterday; he has come to 
Algeria for the autumn. Whatever your motive may have 
been to remain thus hidden from ns all, you must claim 
your own rights now. You must go back to all that is so 
justly yours. Whatever your reason be to have borne with 
all the suffering and the indignity that have been your por- 
tion here, they will be ended now.” 

Her beauty had never struck him so intensely as at this 
moment, when, in urging him to the demand of his rights, 
she so unconsciously tempted him to betray his brother 
and to forsake his word. The indifference and the careless 
coldness that had to so many seemed impenetrable and 
unalterable in her were broken and had changed to the 
warmth of sympathy, of interest, of excitation. There was 
a world of feeling in her face, of eloquence in her eyes, as 
she stooped slightly forward with the rich glow of the 
cashmeres about her, and the sun-gleam falling across her 
brow. Pure, and proud, and noble in every thought, and 
pressing on him only what was the due of his birth and his 
heritage, she yet unwittingly tempted him with as deadly 
a power as though she were the vilest of her sex, seducing 
him downward to some infamous dishonor. 

To do what she said would be but his actual right, and 
would open to him a future so fair that his heart grew sick 
with longing for it; and yet to yield, and to claim justice 
for himself, was forbidden him as utterly as though it were 
some murderous guilt. He had promised never to sacri- 
fice his brother; the promise held him like the fetters of a 
galley. 

“ Why do you not answer me ? n she pursued, while she 
leaned nearer with wonder, and doubt, and a certain 
awakening dread shadowing the blue luster of her eyes 
that were bent so thoughtfully, so searchingly, upon him. 
“ Is it possible that you have heard of your inheritance, of 
your title and estates, and that you voluntarily remain a 
soldier here ? Lord Royallieu must yield them in the in- 
stant you prove your identity, and in that there could be 
no difficulty. I remember you well now, and Philip, I am 
certain, will only need to see you once to ” 

“ Hush, for pity’s sake 1 Have you never heard — have 
none ever told you ” 


540 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ What ?” 

Her face grew paler with a vague sense of fear; she 
knew that he had been equable and resolute under the 
severest tests that could try the strength and the patience 
of man, and she knew, therefore, that no slender thing 
could agitate and could unman him thus. 

“ What is it I should have heard V 1 she asked him, as he 
kept his silence. 

He turned from her so that she could not see his face. 

“That, when I became dead to the world, I died with 
the taint of crime on me 1” 

“Of crime ?” 

An intense horror thrilled through the echo of the word ; 
but she rose, and moved, and faced him with the fearless 
resolve of a woman whom no half-truth would blind, and 
no shadowy terror appall. 

“Of crime? What crime?” 

Then, and then only, he looked at her, a strange, fixed, 
hopeless, yet serene look, that she knew no criminal ever 
would or could have given. 

“I was accused of having forged your brother’s name.” 

A faint cry escaped her ; her lips grew white, and her 
eyes darkened and dilated. 

“ Accused ! But wrongfully ?” 

His breath came and went in quick sharp spasms. 

“I could not prove that.” 

“ N ot prove it ? Why ? ” 

“ I cculd not.” 

“But he — Philip — never believed you guilty?” 

“ I cannot tell. He may; he must.” 

“But you are not!” 

It was not an interrogation, but an affirmation that rang 
out in the silver clearness of her voice. There was not a 
single intonation of doubt in it; there was rather a haughty 
authority that forbade even himself to say that one of his 
race and that one of his order could have been capable of 
such ignoble and craven sin. 

His mouth quivered, a bitter sigh broke from him ; he 
turned his eyes on her with a look that pierced her to the 
heart. 

“ Think me guilty or guiltless, as you will j I cannot 
answer you.” 


“VENETIA.” 541 

Ilis last words were suffocated with the supreme anguish 
of their utterance. As she heard it, the generosity, the 
faith, the inherent justice, and the intrinsic sweetness that 
were latent in her beneath the negligence and the chillness 
of external semblance rose at once to reject the baser, to 
accept the nobler, belief offered to her choice. She had 
lived much in the world, but it had not corroded her ; she 
had acquired keen discernment from it, but she had pre- 
served all the courageous and the chivalrous instincts of 
her superb nature. She looked at him now, and stretched 
her hands out toward him with a royal and gracious ges- 
ture of infinite eloquence. 

“You are guiltless, whatever circumstance may have 
arrayed against you, whatever shadow of evil may have 
fallen falsely on you. Is it not so ?” 

He bowed his head low over her hands as he took them. 
In that moment half the. bitterness of his doom passed 
from him ; he had at least her faith. But his face was 
bloodless as that of a corpse, and the loud bfatings of his 
heart were audible on the stillness. This faith must live 
on without one thing to show that he deserved it ; if, in 
time to come, it should waver and fall, and leave him in 
the darkness of the foul suspicion under which he dwelt, 
what wonder would there be ? 

He lifted his head and looked her full in the eyes ; her 
own closed involuntarily, and filled with tears. She felt 
that the despair and the patience of that look would haunt 
her until her dying day. 

“I was guiltless ; but none could credit it then ; none 
would do so now ; nor can I seek to make them. Ask mo 
no more ; give me your belief, if you can — God knows 
what precious mercy it is to me ; but leave me to fulfill my 
fate, and tell no living creature what I have told you 
now.” 

The great tears stood in her eyes, and blinded her as 
she heard. Even in the amaze and the vagueness of this first 
knowledge of the cause of his exile she felt instinctively, 
as the Little One also had done, that some great sacrifice, 
some great fortitude and generosity, lay within this sealed 
secret of his sufferance of wrong. She knew, too, that it 
would be useless to seek to learn that which he had chosen 

46 


512 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


to conceal ; that for no slender cause could he have come 
out to lead this life of whose sufferings she could gauge 
the measure; that nothing save some absolute and imper- 
ative reason could have driven him to accept such living 
death as was his doom in Africa. 

“ Tell no one !” she echoed. “ What ! not Philip even ? 
not your oldest friend. Ah ! be sure, whatever the evi- 
dence might be against you, his heart never condemned you 
for one instant.” 

“ I believe it. Yet all you can do for me, all I implore 
you to do for me, is to keep silence forever on my name. 
To-day, accident has made me break a vow I never thought 
but to keep sacred. When you recognized me, I could not 
deuy myself, I could not lie to you ; but, for God’s sake, 
tell none of what has passed between us 1” 

“But why?” she pursued — “ why? You lie under this 
charge still — you cannot disprove it, you say; but why 
not come out before the world, and state to all what you 
swear now fo me, and claim your right to bear your 
father’s honors? If you were. falsely accused, there must 
have been some guilty in your stead ; and if ” 

“ Cease, for pity’s sake ! Forget I ever told you I was 
guiltless ! Blot my memory out ; think of me as dead, as 
I have been, till your eyes called me back to life. Think 
that I am branded with the theft of your brother’s name ; 
think that I am vile, and shameless, and fallen as the low- 
est wretch that pollutes this army ; think of me as what 
you will, but not as innocent !” 

The words broke out in a torrent from him, bearing 
down with them all his self-control, as the rush of waters 
bears away all barriers that have long dammed their course. 
They were wild, passionate, incoherent; unlike any that 
had ever passed his lips, or been poured out in her pres- 
ence. He felt mad with the struggle that tore him asunder, 
the longing to tell the truth to her, though he should never 
after look upon her face again, and the honor which bound 
silence on him for sake of the man whom he had sworn 
under no temptatioh to dispossess and to betray. 

She heard him silently, with her grand meditative eyes, 
in which the slow tears still floated, fixed upon him. Most 
women would have thought that conscious guilt spoke in 


543 


“VENETIA.” 

the violence of his self-accusation : she did not. Her in^ 
tuition was too fine, her sympathies too true. She felt 
that he feared, not that she should unjustly think him 
guilty, but that she should justly think him guiltless. She 
knew that this, whatever its root might be, was the fear ot 
the stainless, not of the criminal life. 

“ I hear you,’’ she answered him, gently; “but I do not 
believe you, even against yourself. The man whom Philip 
loved and honored never sank to the base fraud of a thief.” 

Her glorious eyes were still on him as she spoke, seem- 
ing to read his very soul. Under that glance all the man- 
hood, all the race, all the pride, and the love, and the 
courage within him refused to bear in her sight the shame 
of an alien crime, aud rose in revolt to fling off the bond- 
age that forced him to stand as a criminal before the noble 
gaze of this woman. His eyes met hers full, and rested 
on them without wavering ; his head was raised, and his 
carriage had a fearless dignity. 

“ No. I was innocent. But in honor I must bear the 
yoke that I took on me long ago : in honor I can never 
give you or any living soul the proof that this crime was 
not mine. I thought that I should go to my grave with- 
out any ever hearing of the years that I have passed in 
Africa, without any ever learning the name I used to bear. 
As it is, all I can ask is now — to be forgotten.” 

His voice fell before the last words, and faltered over 
them. It was bitter to ask only for oblivion from the 
woman whom he loved with all the strength of a sudden 
passion born in utter hopelessness; the woman whose smile, 
whose beauty, whose love might even possibly have been 
won as his own in the future, if he could have claimed his 
birthright. So bitter, that rather than have spoken those 
words of resignation he would have been led out by a pla- 
toon of his own soldiery and shot in the autumn sunlight 
beside Rake’s grave. 

“ You ask what will not be mine to give,” she answered 
him, while a great weariness stole through her own words, 
for she was bewildered, and pained, and oppressed with a 
new strange sense of helplessness before this man’s name- 
less suffering. “ Remember — I knew you so well in my 
earliest years, and you are so dear to the one dearest to 


544 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


me. It will not be possible to forget such a meeting as 
this. Silence, of coarse, you can command from me, if yon 
insist on it; but ” 

“ I command nothing from you ; but I implore it. It 
is the sole mercy you can show. Never, for God’s sake I 
speak of me to your brother or to mine.” 

“Do you so mistrust Philip’s affection?” 

“No. It is because I trust it too entirely.” 

“Too entirely to do what ?” 

“ To deal it fruitless pain. As you love him — as you 
pity me — pray that he and I never meet !” 

“But why ? if all this could be cleared -” 

“ It never can be.” 

The baffled sense of impotence against the granite wall 
of some immovable calamity which she had felt before 
came on her. She had been always used to be obeyed, fol- 
lowed, and caressed; to see obstacles crumble, difficulties 
disappear, before her wish; she had not been tried by any 
sorrow, save when, a mere child still, she felt the pain of 
her father’s death ; she had been lapped in softest luxury, 
crowned with easiest victory. . The sense that here there 
was a tragedy whose meaning she could not reach, that 
there was here a fate that she could not change or soften, 
brought a strange unfamiliar feeling of weakness before a 
hopeless and cruel doom that was no more to be altered 
by her will than the huge bare rocks of Africa out yonder 
in the glare of noon were to be lifted by her hand. For 
she knew that this man, who made so light of perils 
that would have chilled many to the soul in terror, and 
who bore so quiet and serene a habit beneath the sharpest 
stings and hardest blows of his adversities, would not speak 
thus without full warrant!/ would not consign himself to 
this renunciation of every hope, unless he were compelled 
to it by a destiny from which there was no escape. 

She was silent some moments, her eyes resting on him 
with that grave and luminous regard which no man had 
ever charged to one more tender or less calmly contem- 
plative. He had risen again, and paced to and fro the 
narrow chamber, his head bent down, his chest rising and 
falling with the labored, quickened breath. He had thought 
that the hour in which his brother’s ingratitude had pierced 


“VENETIA.” 545 

his heart had been the greatest suffering he had ever known, 
or ever could know ; but a greater had waited on him here, 
in the fate to which the jeweled toy that he had lifted from 
the water had accidentally led him, not dreaming to what 
he came. 

“ Lord Royallieu,” she said, softly, at length, while she 
rose and moved toward him, the scarlet of the trailing 
cashmeres gathering dark ruby lights in them as they 
caught sun and shadow ; and at the old name, uttered in 
her voice, he started, and turned, and looked at her as 
though he saw some ghost of his past life rise from its 
grave. “Why look at me so?” she pursued ere he could 
speak. “Act how you will, you cannot change the fact 
that you are the bearer of your father’s title. So long as 
you live, your brother Berkeley can never take it legally. 
You may be a Chasseur of the African Army, but none 
the less are you a Peer of England.” 

“ What matter that ?” he muttered. “ Why tell me that ? 
I have said I am dead. Leave me buried here, and let 
him enjoy what he may — what he can.” 

“But this is folly — madness ” 

“ No ; it is neither. I have told you I should stand as 
a felon in the eyes of the English law ; I should have no 
civil rights ; the greatest mercy fate can show me is to let 
me remain forgotten here. It will not be long, most likely, 
before I am thrust into the African sand, to rot like that 
brave soul out yonder. Berkeley will be the lawful holder 
of the title then ; leave him in peace and possession now.” 

He spoke the words out to the end — calmly, and with 
unfaltering resolve. But she saw the great dews gather 
on his temples, where silver threads were just- glistening 
among the bright richness of his hair, and she heard the 
short, low, convulsive breathing with which his chest heaved 
as he spoke. She stood close beside him, and gazed once 
more full in his eyes, while the sweet imperious cadence 
of her voice answered him : 

“There is more than I know of here. Either you are 
the greatest madman, or the most generous man that ever 
lived. You choose to guard your own secret; I will not 
seek to persuade it from you. But tell me one thing — why 
2 K 46* 


546 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


do you thus abjure your rights, permit a false charge to 
rest ou you, and consign yourself forever to this cruel 
agon/ ? i? 

His lips shook under his beard as he answered her: 

“Because I can do no less in honor. For God’s sake 
do not you tempt me !” 

A quick deep sigh escaped her as she heard, her face 
grew very pale as it had done before, and she moved 
slightly from him. • 

“Forgive me,” she said, after a long pause. “I will 
never ask you that again.” 

She could honor honor too well, and too well divine all 
that he suffered for its sake, ever to become his temptress 
in bidding him forsake it; yet, with a certain weariness, a 
certain dread, wholly unfamiliar to her, she realized that 
what he had chosen was the choice not of his present or of 
his future. It could have no concern for her,— save that 
long years ago he had been the best-beloved friend of her 
best-beloved relative — whether or no he remained lost to 
all the world under the unknown name of a French Chas- 
seur. And yet it smote her with a certain dull unanalyzed 
pain ; it gave her a certain emotion of powerlessness and 
of hopelessness to realize that he would remain all his 
years through, until an Arab’s shot should set him free, 
under this bondage of renunciation, beneath this yoke of 
service. She stood silent long, leaning against the oval 
of the casement, with the sun shed over the glowing cash- 
meres that swept round her. He stood apart in silence 
also. What could he say to her ? His whole heart longed 
with an unutterable longing to tell her the truth, and bid 
her be his judge between him and his duty ; but his promise 
hung on him like a leaden weight. He must remain 
speechless;— and leave her, for doubt to assail her, and 
for scorn to follow it in her thoughts of him, if so they 
would. 

Heavy as had been the curse to him of that one hour in 
which honor had forbade him to compromise a woman’s 
reputation, and old tenderness had forbade him to betray 
a brother’s sin, he had never paid so heavy a price for his 
act as that which he paid now. 

Through the yellow sunlight without, over the barren 


r VENETIA.” 


547 


dust-strewn plains, in the distance there approached three 
riders, accompanied by a small escort of Spahis, with their 
crimson burnous floating in the autumnal wind. She 
started, and turned to him: 

“ It is Philip ! He is coming for me from your camp 
tj day.” 

His eyes strained through the sun-glare : 

“ Ah, God ! I cannot meet him — I have not strength. 
You do not know ” 

“ I know how well he loved you.” 

“ Not better than I him 1 But I cannot — I dare not ; — . 
unless I could meet him as we never shall meet upon earth, 
we must be apart forever. For Heaven’s sake promise 
me never to speak my name!” 

“1 promise until you release me.” 

“ And you can believe me innocent still, in face of all ?” 

She stretched her hands to him once more: “I believe. 
For I know what you once were.” 

Great burning tears fell from his eyes upon her hands as 
he bent over them : 

“God bless you! You were an angel of pity to me in 
your childhood; in your womanhood you give me the only 
mercy I have known since the last day you looked upon my 
face ! We shall be far sundered forever ; — may I come to 
you once more ?” 

She paused jn hesitation and in thought awhile, while 
for the first time in all her years a tremulous tenderness 
passed over her face ; she felt an unutterable pity for this 
man, and for his doom. Then she drew her hands gently 
away from him : 

“ Yes, I will see you again.” 

So much concession to such a prayer Venetia Corona 
had never before given. He could not command his voice 
to answer, but he bowed low before her as before an em- 
press : — another moment, and she was alone. 

She stood looking out at the wide level country beyond, 
with the glare of the white strong light and the red burnous 
of the Franco- Arabs glowing against the blue but cloudless 
sky ; she thought that she must be dreaming some fantastic 
6tory born of these desert solitudes. 

Yet her eyes were dim with tears, and her heart ached 


548 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


with another’s woe. Doubt of him never came to her; but 
there was a vague, terrible pathos in the mystery of his fate 
that oppressed her with a weight of future evil, unknown, 
and unmeasured. 

“Is he a madman?” she mused. “If not, he is a mar- 
tyr; — one of the greatest that ever suffered unknown to 
other men.” • 

sK * * 

In the coolness of the late evening in the court of the 
caravanserai her brother and his friends lounged with her 
and the two ladies of their touring and sketching party, 
while they drank their sherbet, and talked of the Gerome 
colors of the place, and watched the flame of the after- 
glow burn out, and threw millet to the doves and pigeons 
straying at their feet. 

“My dear Venetia!” cried the Seraph, carelessly, toss- 
ing handfuls of grain to the eager birds, “ I inquired for 
your Sculptor- Chasseur — that fellow Victor — but I failed 
to see him, for he had been sent on an expedition shortly 
after I reached the camp. They tell me he is a fine sol- 
dier; but by what the Marquis said, I fear he is but a 
handsome blackguard, and Africa, after all, may be his 
fittest place.” 

She gave a bend of her head to show she heard him, 
stroking the soft throat of a little dove that had settled on 
the bench beside her. 

“There is a charming little creature there, a little fire- 
eater — Cigarette they call her — who is in love with him, I 
fancy. Such a picturesque child ! — -swears like a trooper, 
too,” continued he who was now Duke of Lyonnesse. 
“By-the-way, is Berkeley gone?” 

“ Left yesterday.” 

“ What for ? — where to?” 

“I was not interested to inquire.” 

“Ah ! you never liked him ! Odd enough to leave with- 
out reason or apology?” 

“ He had his reasons, doubtless.” 

“And made his apology to you ?” 

“ Oh yes.” 

Her brother looked at her earnestly ; there was a care 
upon her face new to him. 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


549 


“Are you well, my darling?” he asked her. “Has the 
sun been too hot, or la bise too cold for you ?” 

She rose, and gathered her cashmeres about her, and 
smiled somewhat wearily her adieu to him. 

“Both perhaps. I am tired. Goodnight.” 


CHAPTER XXXIII 

THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 

One of the most brilliant of Algerian autumnal days 
shone over the great camp in the south. The war was 
almost at an end for a time ; the Arabs were defeated and 
driven desertwards; hostilities irksome, harassing, and 
annoying, like all guerrilla warfare, would long continue, 
but peace was virtually established, and Zaraila had been 
the chief glory that had been added by the campaign to 
the flag of Imperial France. The kites and the vultures 
had left the bare bones by thousands to bleach upon the 
sands, and the hillocks of brown earth rose in crowds 
where those, more cared for in death, had been hastily 
thrust beneath the brown crust of the earth. The dead 
had received their portion of reward — in the jackal’s teeth, 
in the crow’s beak, in the worm’s caress. And the living 
received theirs in this glorious rose - flecked glittering 
autumn morning, when the breath of winter made the air 
crisp and cool, but the ardent noon still lighted with its 
furnace glow the hillside and the plain. 

The whole of the Army of the South was drawn up on 
the immense level of the plateau to witness the presenta- 
tion of the Cross of the Legion of Honor. 

It was full noon. The sun shone without a single cloud 
on the deep sparkling azure of the skies. The troops 
stretched east and west, north and south, formed up in three 
sides of one vast massive square. The battalions of Zouaves 
and of Zephyrs; the brigade of Chasseurs d’Afrique; the 
squadrons of Spahis; the regiments of Tirailleurs and 


550 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Turcos; the batteries of Flying Artillery, were all massed 
there, reassembled from the various camps and stations 
of the southern provinces to do honor to the day : — to do 
honor in especial to one by whom the glory of the Tricolor 
had been saved unstained. 

The red white and blue of the standards, the brass cf 
the eagle guidons, the gray tossed manes of the chargers, 
the fierce swarthy faces of the soldiery, the scarlet of the 
Spains’ cloaks, and the snowy folds of the Demi-Cavalerie 
turbans, the shine of the sloped lances, and the glisten of 
the carbine barrels, fused together in one sea of blended 
color, flashed into a million of prismatic hues against the 
somber bister shadow of the sunburnt plains and the clear 
blue of the skies. 

It had been a sanguinary, fruitless, cruel campaign ; it 
had availed nothing except to drive the Arabs away from 
some hundred leagues of useless and profitless soil; hun- 
dreds of French soldiers had fallen by disease, and drought, 
and dysentery, as well as by shot and saber, and were un- 
recorded save on the books of the bureaus, unlamented 
save, perhaps, in some little nestling hamlet among the 
great green woods of Normandy, or some wooden hut 
among the olives and the vines of Provence, where some 
woman toiling till sunset among the fields, or praying be- 
fore some wayside saint’s stone niche, would give a thought 
to the far-off and devouring desert that had drawn down 
beneath its sands the head that used to lie upon her bosom, 
cradled as a child’s, or caressed as a lover. 

But the drums rolled out their long deep thunder over 
the wastes ; and the shot-torn standards fluttered gayly in 
the breeze blowing from the west ; and the clear full music 
of the French bands echoed away to the dim distant ter- 
rible south, where the desert-scorch and the desert-thirst 
had murdered their bravest and best — and the Army was 
en fete. En fete , for it did honor to its darling. Cigarette 
received the Cross. 

Mounted on her own little bright bay, Etoile-Filante, 
with tricolor ribbons flying from his bridle and among the 
glossy fringes of his mane, the Little One rode among her 
Spahis. A scarlet kepi was set on her thick silken curls, 
a tricolor sash was knotted round her waist, her wine-bar- 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


551 


rel was slung on her left hip, her pistols thrust in her cein~ 
turon, and a light carbine held in her hand with the butt- 
end resting on her foot. With the sun on her childlike 
brunette face, her eyes flashing like brown diamonds in the 
light, and her marvelous horsemanship, showing its skill in 
a hundred desinvoltures and daring tricks, the little Friend 
of the Flag had come hither among her half-savage war- 
riors, whose red robes surrounded her like a sea of blood. 

And on a sea of blood she, the Child of War, had 
floated, never sinking in that awful flood, but buoyant ever 
above its darkest waves, catching ever some ray of sunlight 
upon her fair young head, and being oftentimes like a star 
of hope to those over whom its dreaded waters closed. 
Therefore they loved her, these grim, slaughterous, and 
lustful warriors, to whom no other thing of womanhood 
was sacred, by whom in their wrath or their crime no friend 
and no brother was spared, whose law was license, and 
whose mercy was murder. They loved her, these brutes 
whose greed was like the tiger’s, whose hate was like the 
devouring flame ; and any who should have harmed a 
single lock of her curling hair would have had the spears 
of the African Mussulmans buried by the score in his body. 
They loved her, with the one fond triumphant love these 
vultures of the army ever knew; and to-day they gloried 
in her with fierce passionate delight. To-day she was to 
her wild wolves of Africa what Jeanne of Vaucouleurs 
was to her brethren of France. And to-day was the crown 
of her young life. It is given to most, if the desire of their 
soul ever become theirs, to possess it only when long and 
weary and fainting toil lias brought them to its goal; 
when beholding the golden fruit so far off, through so 
dreary a pilgrimage, dulls its bloom as they approach ; 
when having so long centered all their thoughts and hopes 
in the denied possession of that one fair thing, they find 
but little beauty in it when that possession is granted to 
satiate their love. But thrice happy, and few as happy, 
are they to whom the dream of their youth is fulfilled in 
their youth, to whom their ambition comes in full sweet 
fruitage, while yet the colors of glory have not faded to 
the young, eager, longing eyes that watch its advent. 
AiuLaf these was Cigarette. 


552 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


In the fair, slight girlish body of the child-soldier there 
lived a courage as daring as Danton’s, a patriotism as 
pure as Vergniaud’s, a soul as aspiring as Napoleon’s. 
Untaught, untutored, uninspired by poet’s words or pa- 
triot’s bidding, spontaneous as the rising and the blossom- 
ing of some wind-sown, sun-fed flower, there was, in vhi3 
child of the battle and the razzia, the spirit of genius, the 
desire to live and to die greatly. It was unreasoned on, 
it was felt not thought, it was often drowned in the gayety 
of young laughter and the ribaldry of military jest, it was 
often obscured by noxious influence and stifled beneath the 
fumes of lawless pleasure ; but there, ever, in the soul and 
the heart of Cigarette, dwelt the germ of a pure ambition 
— the ambition to do some noble thing for France, and 
leave her name upon her soldiers’ lips, a watchword and a 
rallying-cry for evermore. To be forever a beloved tradi- 
tiou in the army of her country, to have her name remem- 
bered in the roll-call as “Movt sur le champ d’honneur 
to be once shrined in the love and honor of France, Cigar- 
ette — full of the boundless joys of life that knew no weak- 
ness and no pain, strong as the young'goat, happy as the 
young lamb, careless as the young flower tossing on the 
summer breeze — Cigarette would have died contentedly. 
And now, living, some measure of this desire had been 
fulfilled to her, some breath of this imperishable glory had 
passed over her. France had heard the story of Zaraila ; 
from the Throne a message had been passed to her ; what 
was far beyond all else to her, her own Army of Africa 
had crowned her, and thanked her, and adored her as with 
one voice, and wheresoever she passed the wild cheers 
rang through the roar of musketry, as through the silence 
of sunny air, and throughout the regiments every sword 
would have sprung from its scabbard in her defense if she 
had but lifted her hand and said one word — “Zaraila 1” 
The Army looked on her with delight now. In all that 
mute, still, immovable mass that stretched out so far, in 
such gorgeous array, there was not one man whose eyes 
did not turn on her, whose pride did not center in her— 
their Little One, who was so wholly theirs, and who had 
been under the shadow of their Flag ever since the curls, 
so dark now, had been yellow as wheat in her infancy. 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


553 


The Flag had been her shelter, her guardian, her play- 
thing, her idol ; the flatter of the striped folds had been 
the first thing at which her childish eyes had laughed; the 
preservation of its colors from the sacrilege of an enemy’s 
touch had been her religion, a religion whose true follow- 
ing was, in her sight, salvation of the worst and the most 
worthless life; and that Flag she had saved, and borne 
aloft in victory at Zaraila. There was not one in all those 
hosts whose eyes did not turn on her with gratitude, and 
reverence, and delight in her as their own. 

Not one : except where her own keen, rapid glance, far- 
seeing as the hawk’s, lighted on the squadrons of the 
Chasseurs d’Afrique, and found among their ranks one 
face, grave, weary, meditative, with a gaze that seemed 
looking far away from the glittering scene to a grave that 
lay unseen leagues beyond, behind the rocky ridge. 

“ lie is thinking of the dead man, not of me,” thought 
Cigarette; and the first taint of bitterness entered into 
her cup of joy and triumph, as such bitterness enters into 
most cups that qa;e drunk by human lips. A whole army 
was thinking of her, and of her alone ; and there was a void 
in her heart, a thorn in her crown, because one among that 
mighty mass — one only — gave her presence little heed, but 
thought rather of a lonely tomb among the desolation of 
the plains. 

But she had scarce time even for that flash of pain to 
quiver in impotent impatience through her. The trumpets 
sounded, the salvoes of artillery pealed out, the lances and 
the swords were carried up in salute ; on to the ground 
rode the Marshal of France, who represented the imperial 
will and presence, surrounded by his stalf, by generals of 
division and brigade, by officers of rank, and by some few 
civilian riders. An aid galloped up to her where she 
stood with the corps of her Spahis, and gave her his orders. 
The Little One nodded carelessly, and touched Etoile- 
Filante with the prick of the spur. Like lightning the 
animal bounded forth from the ranks, rearing and plung- 
ing, and swerving from side to side, while his rider, with 
exquisite grace and address, kept her seat like the little 
semi-Arab that she was, and with a thousand curves and 

4 1 


554 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


bounds cantered down the line of the gathered troops, with 
the west wind blowing from the far-distant sea, and fan- 
ning her bright cheeks till they wore the soft scarlet flush 
of the glowing japonica flower. And all down the ranks 
a low, hoarse, strange, louging murmur went — the buzz of 
the voices which, but that discipline suppressed them, would 
have broken out in worshiping acclamations. 

As carelessly as though she reined up before the Cafe 
door of the As de Pique, she arrested her horse before the 
great Marshal who was the impersonation of authority, 
and put her hand up in the salute, with her saucy way- 
ward laugh. He was the impersonation of that vast, silent, 
awful, irresponsible power which, under the name of the 
Second Empire, stretched its hand of iron across the sea, 
and forced the soldiers of France down into nameless 
graves, with the desert sand choking their mouths; but 
he was no more to Cigarette than any drummer-boy that 
might be present. She had all the contempt for the laws 
of rank of your thorough inborn democrat, all the gay in- 
souciant indifference to station of the really free and un- 
trammeled nature ; and, in her sight, a dying soldier, 
lying quietly in a ditch to perish of shot-wounds without a 
word or a moan, was greater than all Messieurs les Mare- 
chaux glittering in their stars and orders. As for im- 
pressing her, or hoping to impress her, with rank — pooh ! 
You might as well have bid the sailing clouds pause in 
their floating passage because they came between royalty 
and the sun. All the sovereigns of Europe would have 
awed Cigarette not one whit more than a gathering oi 
muleteers. “Allied sovereigns — bah !” she would have 
said, “what did that mean in ’15? A chorus of magpies 
chattering over one stricken eagle !” 

So she reined up before the Marshal and his staff, and 
the few great personages whom Algeria could bring 
around them, as indifferently as she had many a time 
reined up before a knot of grim Turcos, smoking under 
a barrack-gate. He was nothing to her: it was her army 
that crowned her. “ The Generalissimo is the poppy-head, 
the men are the wheat; lay every ear of the wheat low, 
and of what use is the towering poppy that blazed so 
grand in the sun ?” Cigarette would say with metaphori- 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


555 


cal unction, forgetful, like most allegorists, that her fable 
was one-sided and unjust in figure and deduction. 

Nevertheless, • despite her gay contempt for rank, her 
heart beat fast under its gold-laced jacket as she reined up 
Etoile and saluted. In that hot clear sun all the eyes of 
that immense host were fastened on her, and the hour of 
her longing desire was come at last. France had re- 
cognized that she had done greatly, and France, through 
the voice of this, its chief, spoke to her — France, her be- 
loved, and her guiding-star, for whose sake the young 
brave soul within her would have dared and have endured 
all things. There was a group before her, large and bril- 
liant, but at them Cigarette never looked; what she saw 
were the sunburnt faces of her “ children,” of men who, in 
the majority, were old enough to be her grandsires, who 
had been with her through so many darksome hours, and 
whose black and rugged features lightened and grew tender 
whenever they looked upon their Little One. For the 
moment she felt giddy with sweet fiery joy; they were 
here to behold her thanked in the name of France. 

The Marshal, in advance of all his staff, doffed his plumed 
hat and bowed to his saddle-bow as he faced her. lie 
knew her well by sight, this pretty child of his Army of 
Africa, who had, before then, suppressed mutiny like a 
veteran, and led the charge like a Murat — this kitten with 
a lion’s heart, this humming-bird with an eagle’s swoop. 

“Mademoiselle,” he commenced, while his voice, well 
skilled to such work, echoed to the farthest end of the 
long lines of troops, “ I have the honor to discharge to- 
day the happiest duty of my life. In conveying to you 
the expression of the Emperor’s approval of your noble 
conduct in the present campaign, I express the sentiments 
of the whole Army. Your action on the day of Zaraila 
was as brilliant in conception as it was great in execution ; 
and the courage you displayed was only equaled by your 
patriotism. May the soldiers of many wars remember you 
and emulate you. In the name of France, I thank you. 
In the name of the Emperor, I bring to you the Cross of 
the Legion of Honor.” 

As the brief and soldierly words rolled down the ranks 
of the listening regiments, he stooped forward from his 


556 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


saddle and fastened the red ribbon on her breast ; while 
from the whole gathered mass, watching, hearing, waiting 
breathlessly to give their tribute of applause to their dar- 
ling also, a great shout rose as with one voice, strong, full, 
echoing over and over again across the plains in thunder 
that joined her name with the name of France and of Na- 
poleon, and hurled it upward in fierce tumultuous idolatrous 
love to those cruel cloudless skies that shone above the 
dead. She was their child, their treasure, their idol, their 
young leader in war, their young angel in suffering; she 
was all their own, knowing with them one common mother 
— France. Honor to her was honor to them ; they gloried 
with heart and soul in this bright young fearless life that 
had been among them ever since her infant feet had waded 
through the . blood of slaughter-fields, and her infant lips 
had laughed to see the tricolor float in the sun above the 
smoke of battle. 

And as she heard, her face became very pale, her large 
eyes grew dim and very soft, her mirthful mouth trembled 
with the pain of a too intense joy. She lifted her head, 
and all the unutterable love she bore her country and her 
people thrilled through the music of her voice : 

“Frangais! — ce n'etait rien!” 

That. was all she said; in that one first word of their 
common nationality, she spoke alike to the Marshal of the 
Empire and to the conscript of the ranks. “ Fran9ais I” 
that one title made them all equal in her sight ; whoever 
claimed it was honored in her eyes, and was precious to 
her heart, and when she answered them that it was no- 
thing, this thing which they glorified in her, she answered 
but what seemed the simple truth in her code. She would 
have thought it “ nothing ” to have perished by shot, or 
steel, or flame, in day-long torture for that one fair sake of 
France. 

Vain in all else, and to all else wayward, here she wag 
docile and submissive as the most patient child ; here she 
deemed the greatest and the hardest thing that she could 
ever do far less than all that she would willingly have 
done. And as she looked upon the host whose thousand 
and ten thousand voices rang up to the noonday sun in 
her homage, and in hers alone, a light like a glory beamed 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


557 


npon her face that for once was white and still and very 
grave ; — none who saw her face then, ever forgot that 
look. 

In that moment she touched the full sweetness of a 
proud and pure ambition, attained and possessed in all 
its intensity, in all its perfect splendor. In that moment, 
she knew that divine hour which, born of a people’s love 
and of the impossible desires of genius in its youth, comes 
to so few human lives — knew that which was known to the 
young Napoleon when, in the hot hush of the nights of 
July, France welcomed the Conqueror of Italy. And in 
that moment there was an intense stillness ; the Army 
crowned as its bravest and its best a woman-child in the 
spring-time of her girlhood. 

Then Cigarette laid her hand on the Cross that had 
been the dream of her years since she had first seen the 
brazen glisten of the eagles above her wondering eyes of 
infancy, and loosened it from above her heart, and stretched 
her hand out with it to the great Chief. 

‘‘Monsieur le Mareehal, this is not for me.” 

“Not for you ! The Emperor bestows it ” 

Cigarette saluted with her left hand, still stretching to 
him the decoration with the other. 

“It is not for me — not while I wear it unjustly.” 

“ Unjustly 1 What is your meaning? My child, you 
talk strangely. The gifts of the Empire are not given 
lightly.” 

“No; and they shall not be given unfairly. Listen.” 
The color had flushed back, bright and radiant, to her 
cheeks; her eyes glanced with their old daring; her con- 
temptuous, careless eloquence returned, and her voice 
echoed, every note distinct as the notes of a trumpet-call, 
down the ranks of the listening soldiery. “Hark you! 
The Emperor sends me this Cross; France thanks me ; the 
Army applauds me. Well, I thank them, one and all. 
Cigarette was never yet ungrateful; it is the sin of the 
coward. But I say I will not take what is unjustly mine, 
and this preference to me is unjust. I saved the day at 
Zaraila? — oh-he 1 grande chose ga! And how? — by 
scampering fast on my mare, and asking for a squadron or 
two of my Spahis— ■ that was all. If I had not done so 


558 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


much — I, a soldier of Africa — why, I should have deserved 
to have been shot like a cat — bah! — should I not? It 
was not I who saved the battle. Who was it ? It was a 
Chasseur d’Afrique, I tell you. What did he do ? Why, 
this. When his officers were all gone down, he rallied, 
and gathered his handful of men, and held the ground with 
them all through the day — two — four — six — eight — ten 
hours in the scorch of the sun. The Arbicos, even, were 
forced to see that was grand ; they offered him life if ho 
would yield. All his answer was to form his few horse- 
men into line as well as he could for the slain, and charge 
— a last charge in which he knew not one of his troop 
could live through the swarms of the Arbis around them. 
That I saw with my own eyes. I and my Spahis just 
reached him in time. Then who is it that saved the day, 
I pray you ? — I, who just ran a race for fun and came in at 
the fag-end of the thing, or this man who lived the whole day 
through in the carnage, and never let go of the guidon, but 
only thought how to die greatly ? I tell you, the Cross is his, 
and not mine. Take it back, and give it where it is due.” 

The Marshal listened, half amazed, half amused — half 
prepared to resent the insult to the Empire and to disci- 
pline, half disposed to award that submission to her ca- 
price which all Algeria gave to Cigarette. 

“Mademoiselle,” he said, with a grave smile, “the hon- 
ors of the Empire are not to be treated thus. But who is 
this man for whom you claim so much ?” 

“Who is he?” echoed Cigarette, with all her fiery dis- 
dain for authority ablaze once more like brandy in a flame. 
“Oh-he ! Napoleon Premier would not have left his Mar- 
shals to ask that ! He is the finest soldier in Africa, if it 
be possible for one to be finer than another where all are 
so great. They know that ; they pick him out for all the 
dangerous missions. But the Black Hawk hates him, and 
so France never hears the truth of all that he does. I tell 
you, if the Emperor had seen him as I saw him on the field 
of Zaraila, his would have been the Cross, and not mine.” 

“ You are generous, my Little One.” 

“No ; I am just.” 

Her brave eyes glowed in the sun, her voice rang as 
clear as a bell. She raised her head proudly and glanced 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


559 


down the line of her array. She was just — that was the one 
virtue in Cigarette’s creed without which you were pol- 
troon, or liar, or both. 

She alone knew what neglect, what indifference, what 
unintentional but none the less piercing insults she had to 
avenge ; she alone knew of that pain with which she had 
heard the name of her patrician rival murmured in delirious 
slumber after Zaraila ; she alone knew of that negligent 
caress of farewell with which her lips had been touched as 
lightly as his hand caressed a horse’s neck or a bird’s wing. 
But these did not weigh with her one instant to make her 
withhold the words that she deemed deserved; these did 
not balance against him one instant the pique and the pain 
of her own heart in opposition to the due of his courage 
and his fortitude. 

Cigarette was rightly proud of her immunity from the 
weaknesses of her sex; she had neither meanness nor self- 
ishness. 

The Marshal listened gravely, the groups around him 
smilingly. If it had been any other than the Little One, 
it would have been very different; as it was, all France and 
all Algeria knew Cigarette. 

“ What may be the name of this man whom you praise 
so greatly, my pretty one ?” he asked her. 

“ That I cannot tell, Monsieur le Marechal. All I know 
is he calls himself here Louis Victor.” 

“ Ah 1 I have heard much of him. A fine soldier, 
but ” 

“A fine soldier without a ‘but,’” interrupted Cigarette, 
with rebellious indifference to the rank of the great man 
she corrected, “ unless you add, ‘ but never done justice by 
his Chief.’” 

As she spoke, her eyes for the first time glanced over 
the various personages who were mingled among the staff 
of the Marshal, his invited guests for the review upon the 
plains. The color burned more duskily in her cheek, her 
eyes glittered with hate ; she could have bitten her little, 
frank, witty tongue through and through for having spoken 
the name of that Chasseur who was yonder, out of earshot, 
where the lance-heads of his squadrons glistened against 
the blue skies. She saw a face which, though seen but 


660 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


once before, she knew instantly again — the face of “ Mi- 
ladi.” And she saw it change color, and lose its beautiful 
hue, and grow grave and troubled as the last words passed 
between herself and the French Marshal. 

“Ah! can she feel /” wondered Cigarette, who, with a 
common error of such vehement young democrats as her- 
self, always thought that hearts never ached in the Patrician 
Order, and thought so still when she saw the listless proud 
tranquillity return, not again to be altered, over the perfect 
features that she watched with so much violent instinctive 
hate. “Did she heed his name, or did she not? What 
are their faces in that Order? Only alabaster masks !” 
mused the child. And her heart sank, and bitterness min- 
gled with her joy, and the soul that had a moment before 
been so full of all pure and noble emotion, all high and 
patriotic and idealic thought, was dulled and soiled and 
clogged with baser passions. So ever do unworthy things 
drag the loftier nature earthward. 

She scarcely heard the Marshal’s voice as it addressed 
her with a kindly indulgence, as to a valued soldier and a 
spoilt pet in one. 

“Have no fear, Little One. Yictor’s claims are not for- 
gotten, though we may await our own time to investigate 
and reward them. No one ever served the Empire and 
remained unrewarded. For yourself, wear your Cross 
proudly. It glitters above not only the bravest but the 
most generous heart in the service.” 

None had ever won such warm words from the redoubted 
chief, whose speech was commonly rapid and stern as his 
conduct of war, and who usually recompensed his men for 
fine service rather with a barrel of brandy to season their 
rations than with speeches of military eulogium. But it 
failed to give delight to Cigarette. She felt resting upon 
her the calm gaze of those brilliant azure eyes ; and she 
felt, as she had done once in her rhododendron shelter, as 
though she were some very worthless, rough, rude, un- 
taught, and coarse little barbarian, who was, at best, but 
fit for a soldier’s jest and a soldier’s riot in the wild license 
of the barrack-room or the campaigning tent. It was only 
the eyes of this woman, whom he loved, which ever had 
power to awaken that humiliation, that impatience of her- 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 561 

self, that consciousness of something lost and irrevocable, 
which moved her now. 

Cigarette was proud with an intense pride of all her 
fiery liberty from every feminine trammel, of all her com- 
plete immunity from every scruple and every fastidiousness 
of her sex. But, for once, within sight of that noble and 
haughty beauty a poignant, cruel, wounding sense of utter 
inferiority, of utter debasement, possessed and weighed 
down her lawless and indomitable spirit. Some vague weary 
feeling that her youth was fair enough in the sight of men, 
but that her older years would be very dark, very terrible, 
came on her even in this hour of the supreme joy, the su- 
preme triumph, of her life. Even her buoyant and cloud- 
less nature did not escape that mortal doom which pursues 
and poisons every ambition in the very instant of its full 
fruition. 

The doubt, the pain, the self- mistrust were still upon 
her as she saluted once again and paced down the ranks 
of the assembled divisions; while every lance was carried, 
every sword lifted, every bayonet presented to the order, 
“ Portez vos armes J” as she went ; greeted as though she 
were an empress, for that cross which glittered on her 
heart, for that courage wherewith she had saved the Tri- 
color. 

The great shouts rent the air; the clash of the lowered 
arms saluted her; the drums rolled out upon the air; the 
bands of the regiments of Africa broke into the fiery rap- 
ture of a war-march ; the folds of the battle-torn flags 
were flung out wider and wider on the breeze. Gray- 
bearded men g<?.zed on her with tears of delight upon their 
grizzled lashes, and young boys looked at her as the chil- 
dren of France once gazed upon Jeanne d’Arc, where 
Cigarette, with the red ribbon on her breast, rode slowly 
in the noonday light along the line of troops. 

It was the paradise of which she had dreamed; it was 
the homage of the army she adored ; it was one of those 
hours in which life is transfigured, exalted, sublimated into 
a divine glory by the pure love of a people; and yet in 
that instant, so long, so passionately desired, the doom of 
all genius was hers. There was the stealing pain of a 
weary unrest amid the sunlit and intoxicating joy of sat- 
isfied aspiration. 

2 L 


562 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


The eyes; of Yenetia Corona followed her with something 
of ineffable pity. “ Poor little unscxed child I” she thought. 
“How pretty and how brave she isl and — how true to 
him 1” 

The Seraph, beside her in the group around the flag- 
staff, smiled and turned to her. 

“I said that little Amazon was in love with this fellow 
Victor; how loyally she stood up for him. But I dare 
say she would be as quick to send a bullet through-him, if 
he should ever displease her.” 

“ Why ? Where there is so much courage there must 
be much nobility, even in the abandonment of such a life 
as hers.” 

“Ah, you do not know what half-French, half-African 
natures are. She would die for him just now very likely ; 
but if he ever forsake her, she will be quite as likely to 
run her dirk through him.” 

“ Forsake her 1 what is he to her?” 

There was a certain impatience in the tone, and some- 
thing of contemptuous disbelief, that made her brother 
look at her in wonder. 

“What on earth can the loves of a camp concern her ?” 
he thought, as he answered: “Nothing that I know of; 
but this charming little tigress is very fond of him. By- 
the-way, can you point the man out to me ? I am curious 
to see him.” 

“ Impossible ! There are ten thousand faces, and the 
cavalry squadrons are so far off.” 

She spoke with indifference, but she grew a little pale 
as she did so, and the eyes that had always met his so 
frankly, so proudly, were turned from him. He saw it, 
and it troubled him with a trouble the more perplexed that 
he could assign to himself no reason for it. That it could 
be caused by any interest felt for a Chasseur d’Afrique by 
the haughtiest lady in all Europe would have been too 
preposterous and too insulting a supposition for it ever to 
occur to him. And he did not dream the truth — the truth 
that it was her withholding, for the first time in all her 
life, any secret from him which caused her pain ; that it 
was the fear lest he should learn that his lost friend was 
living thus which haunted her with that unspoken anxiety. 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


563 


They were traveling here with the avowed purpose of 
seeing the military operations of the south ; she could not 
have prevented him from accepting the Marshal’s invita- 
tion to the review of the African Army without exciting 
comment and interrogation ; she was forced to let events 
take their own course, and shape themselves as they would ; 
yet an apprehension, a dread, that she could hardly form 
into distinct shape, pursued her. It weighed on her with 
an infinite oppression — this story which she alone had had 
revealed to her, this life whose martyrdom she alone had 
seen, and whose secret even she could not divine. It af- 
fected her more powerfully, it grieved her more keenly, 
than she herself knew. It brought her close, for the only 
time in her experience, to a life absolutely without a hope, 
and one that accepted the despair of such a destiny with 
silent resignation ; it moved her as nothing less, as nothing 
feebler or of more common type, could ever have found 
power to do. There were a simplicity and a greatness in 
the mute, unpretentious, almost unconscious, heroism of 
this man, who, for the sheer sake of that which he deemed 
the need of “ honor,” accepted the desolation of his entire 
future, which attracted her as nothing else had ever done, 
which made her heart ache when she looked at the glitter 
of the Franco-Arab squadrons, where their sloped lances 
glistened in the sun, with a pang that she had never felt 
before. Moreover, as the untutored, half-barbaric, impul- 
sive young heart of Cigarette had felt, so felt the high- 
bred, cultured, world-wise mind of Venetia Corona — that 
this man’s exile was no shame, but some great sacrifice ; 
a sacrifice whose bitterness smote her with its own suffer- 
ing, whose mystery wearied her with its own perplexity, 
as she gazed down the line of the regiments to where the 
shot-bruised Eagle of Zaraila gleamed above the squad- 
rons of the Chasseurs d’Afrique. 

lie, in his place among those squadrons, knew her, though 
so far distant, and endured the deadliest trial of patience 
which had come to him while beneath the yoke of African dis- 
cipline. To leave his place was to incur the heaviest punish- 
ment ; yet he could almost have risked that sentence rather 
than wait there. Only seven days had gone by since he had 
been with her under the roof of the caravanserai j but it 


561 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


seemed to him as if these days had aged him more than 
all the twelve years that he had passed upon the Algerian 
soil. He was thankful that the enmity of his relentless 
chief had placed such shadow of evil report between his 
name and the rewards due to his service, that even the 
promised recognition of his brilliant actions at Zaraila and 
elsewhere was postponed awhile on the plea of investiga- 
tion. He was thankful that the honors which the whole 
Army expected for him, and which the antagonism of 
Ch&teauroy would soon be powerless to avert any longer 
from their meet bestowal, did not force him to go up there 
in the scorching light of the noon, and take those honors 
as a soldier of France, under the eyes of the man he loved, 
of the woman he adored. 

As it was, he sat motionless as a statue in his saddle, 
and never looked westward to where the tricolors of the 
flag-staff drooped above the head of Yenetia Corona. 

Thus, he never heard the gallant words spoken in his 
behalf by the loyal lips that he had not cared to caress. 
As she passed down the ranks, indeed, he saw and smiled 
on his little champion ; but the smile had only a weary 
kindness of recognition in it, and it wounded Cigarette 
more than though he had struck her through the breast 
with his lance. 

The moment that he dreaded came ; the troops broke 
up and marched past the representative of their empire, 
the cavalry at the head of the divisions. He passed among 
the rest ; lie raised his lance so that it hid his features as 
much as its slender shaft could do; the fair and noble face 
on which his glance flashed was very pale and very grave ; 
the one beside her was sunny and frank, and unchanged 
by the years that had drifted by, and its azure eyes, so like 
her own, sweeping over the masses with all the swift, keen 
appreciation of a military glance, were so eagerly noting 
carriage, accouterment, harness, horses, that they never 
once fell upon the single soldier whose heart so unutterably 
longed for, even while it dreaded, his recognition. 

Yenetia gave a low, quick breath of mingled pain and 
relief as the last of the Chasseurs paced by. The Seraph 
Btarted, and turned his head : 

“ My darling ! Are you not well Z” 


THE GIFT OF THE CROSS. 


565 


11 Perfectly I” 

“You do not look so ; — and you forgot now to point 
me out this special trooper. I forgot him too.” 

“He goes there — the tenth from here.” 

Her brother looked ; it was too late : 

“ He is taller than the others. That is all I can see 
now that his back is turned. I will seek him out when ” 

“ Do no such thing !” 

“And why? It was your own request that I in- 
quired ” 

“ Think me changeable as you will. Do nothing to seek 
him, to inquire for him ” 

“But why? A man who at Zaraila ” 

“ Never mind ! Do not let it be said you notice a Chas- 
seur d’Afrique at my instance.” 

The color flushed her face as she spoke ; it was with 
the scorn, the hatred, of this shadow of an untruth with 
which she for the sole time in life soiled her lips. He, 
noting it, shook himself restlessly in his saddle. If he had 
not known her to be the noblest and the haughtiest of all 
the imperial women who had crowned his house with their 
beauty and their honor, he could have believed that some 
interest, degrading as disgrace, moved her toward this 
foreign trooper, and caused her altered wishes and her 
silence. As it was, so much insult to her as would have 
existed in the mere thought was impossible to him ; yet it 
left him annoyed and vaguely disquieted. 

The subject did not wholly fade from his mind through- 
out the entertainments that succeeded to the military in- 
spection, in the great white tent glistening with gilded 
bees and brightened with tricolor standards which the in- 
genuity of the soldiers of the administration had reared 
as though by magic amid the barrenness of the country, 
and in which the skill of camp cooks served up a delicate 
banquet. The scene was very picturesque, and all the 
more so for the wide-spread changing panorama without 
of the canvas city of the camp. It was chiefly designed 
to pleasure the great lady who had come so far southward ; 
all the resources which could be employed were exhausted 
to make the occasion memorable and worthy of the dignity 
of the guests whom the Viceroy cf the Empire delighted 

43 


566 


UNDER TWO FLAQS. 


to honor. Yet she, seated there on his right hand, where 
the rich skins and cashmeres and carpets were strewn on a 
dais, saw in reality little save a confused blending of hues, 
and metals, and orders, and weapons, aud snowy beards, 
and olive faces, and French elegance and glitter fused with 
the grave majesty of Arab pomp. For her thoughts were 
not with the scene around her, but with the soldier who 
was without in that teeming crowd of tents, who lived in 
poverty, and danger, and the hard slavery of unquestion- 
ing obedience, and asked only to be as one dead to all who 
had known and loved him in his youth. It was in vain 
that she repelled the memory ; it usurped her, and would 
not be displaced. 

Meantime, in another part of the camp, the heroine of 
Zaraila was feasted, not less distinctively, if more noisily 
and more familiarly, by the younger officers of the various 
regiments. La Cigarette, many a time before the reigning 
spirit of suppers and carouses, was banqueted with all the 
eclat that befitted that cross which sparkled on her blue 
and scarlet vest. High throned on a pyramid of knap- 
sacks, canteens, and rugs, toasted a thousand times in all 
brandies and red wines that the stores would yield, sung 
of in improvised odes that were chanted by voices which 
might have won European fame as tenor or as basso, 
caressed and sued with all the rapid, fiery, lightly-come 
and lightly-go love of the camp, with twice a hundred 
flashing, darkling eyes bent on her in the hot admiration 
that her vain coquette spirit found delight in, ruling as she 
would with jest, and caprice, and command, and bravado 
all these men who were terrible as tigers to their foes, the 
Little One reigned alone ; and — like many who have reigned 
before her — found lead in her scepter, dross in her diadem, 
satiety in her kingdom. 

When it was over, this banquet that was all in her honor, 
and that three months before would have been a paradise 
to her, she shook herself free of the scores of arms out- 
stretched to keep her captive, and went out into the night 
alone. She did not know what she ailed, but she was rest- 
less, oppressed, weighed down with a sense of dissatisfied 
weariness that had never before touched the joyous and 
elastic nature of the child of France. 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 56T 

And this, too, in the moment when the very sweetest 
and loftiest of her ambitions was attained 1 when her hand 
wandered to that decoration on her heart which had been 
ever in her sight what the crown of wild olive and the 
wreath of summer grasses were to the youths and to the 
victors of the old dead classic years I As she stood in 
solitude under the brilliancy of the stars, tears, unfamiliar 
and unbidden, rose in her eyes as they gazed over the hosts 
around her. 

“ How they live only for the slaughter ! how they perish 
like the beasts of the field !” she thought. Upon her, as 
on the poet or the patriot who could translate and could 
utter the thought as she could not, there weighed the 
burden of that heart-sick consciousness of the vanity of the 
highest hope, the futility of the noblest effort, to bring light 
into, the darkness of the suffering, toiling, blind throngs of 
human life. 

“ There is only one thing worth doing — to die greatly 1” 
thought the aching heart of the child-soldier, unconsciously 
returning to the only end that the genius and the greatness 
of Greece could find as issue to the terrible jest, the mys- 
terious despair, of all existence. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 

THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 

Some way distant, parted by a broad strip of unoccu- 
pied ground from the camp, were the grand marquees set 
aside for the Marshal and for his guests. They were twelve 
in number, gayly decorated as far as decoration could be 
obtained in the southern provinces of Algeria, and had, 
Arab-like, in front of each the standard of the Tricolor. 
Before one were two other standards also— the flags of 
England and of Spain. Cigarette, looking on from afar, 
saw the alien colors wave in the torchlight flickering on 
them. “ That is hers” thought the Little One, with the 


568 


’JNDER TWO FLAGS. 


mournful and noble emotions of the previous moments 
swiftly changing into the violent, reasonless, tumultuous 
hatred at once of a rival and of an Order. 

Cigarette was a thorough democrat ; when she was two 
years old she had sat on the topmost pile of a Parisian 
barricade, with the red bonnet on her curls, and had 
clapped her tiny hands for delight when the bullets flew, 
and the “ Marseillaise ” rose above the cannonading ; and 
the spirit of the musketry and of the “ Marseillaise ” had 
together passed into her and made her what she was. She 
was a genuine democrat ; and nothing short of the pure 
isonomy of the Greeks was tolerated in her political phi- 
losophy, though she could not have told what such a word 
had meant for her life. She had all the furious prejudices 
and all the instinctive truths in her of an uncompromising 
Rouge ; and the sight alone of those lofty standards, sig- 
nalizing the place of rest of the “aristocrats,” while her 
“children’s” lowly tents wore in her sight all the dignity 
and all the distinction of the true field, would have aroused 
her ire at anytime. But now a hate tenfold keener moved 
her; she had a jealousy of the one in whose honor those 
two foreign ensigns floated, that was the most bitter thing 
which had ever entered her short and sunny life — a hate 
the hotter because tinged with that sickening sense of self- 
humiliation, because mingled with that wondering emotion 
at beholding something so utterly unlike to all that she 
had known or dreamt. 

She had it in her, could she have had the power, to 
mercilessly and brutally destroy this woman’s beauty, which 
was so far above her reach, as she had once destroyed the 
ivory wreath; yet, as that of the snow-white carving had 
done, so did this fair and regal beauty touch her, even in 
the midst of her fury, with a certain reverent awe, with a 
certain dim sense of something her own life had missed. 
She had trodden the ivory in pieces with all the violence 
of childish, savage, uncalculating hate, and she had been 
chidden, as by a rebuking voice, by the wreck which her 
action had made at her feet : so could she now, had it been 
possible, have ruined and annihilated the loveliness that 
filled his heart and his soul ; but so would she also, the 
moment her instinct to avenge herself had been sated, have 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 509 

felt the remorse and the shame of having struck down a 
delicate and gracious thing that even in its destruction had 
a glory that was above her. 

Even her very hate attracted her to the sight, to the 
study, to the presence of this woman, who was as dissimi- 
lar to all of womanhood that had ever crossed her path, in 
camp and barrack, as the pure, white, gleaming lily of the 
hothouse is unlike the wind-tossed, sand- stained, yellow 
leaf down-trodden in the mud. An irresistible fascination 
drew her toward the self-same pain which had so wounded 
her a few hours before — an impulse more intense than 
curiosity, and more vital than caprice, urged her to the 
vicinity of the only human being who had ever awakened 
in her the pangs of humiliation, the throbs of envy. 

And she went to that vicinity, now that the daylighthad 
just changed to evening, and the ruddy torch-glare was 
glowing everywhere from great pine boughs thrust in the 
ground, with their resinous branches steeped in oil and 
flaring alight. There was not a man that night in camp 
wdio would have dared oppose the steps of the young- 
heroine of the Cross wherever they might choose, in their 
fantastic flight, to wander. The sentinels passing up and 
down the great space before the marquees challenged her, 
indeed, but she was quick to give the answering password, 
and they let her go by them, their eyes turning after the 
little picturesque form that every soldier of the Corps of 
Africa loved almost like the flag beneath which he fought. 
Once in the magic circle, she paused awhile, the desire that 
urged her on, and the hate that impelled her backward, 
keeping her rooted there in the dusky shadow which the 
flapping standards threw. 

To creep covertly into her rival’s presence, to hide her- 
self like a spy to see what she wished, to show fear, or 
hesitation, or deference, were not in the least what she 
contemplated. What she intended was to confront this 
fair, strange, cold, cruel thing, and see if she were of flesh 
c.nd blood like other living beings, and do the best that 
could be done to outrage, to scourge, to challenge, to de- 
ride her with all the insolent artillery of camp ribaldry, 
and show her how a child of the people could laugh at her 
rank, and affront her purity, and scorn her power. Definite 
48 * 


570 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


idea then?, was none in her ; she had come on impulse ; 
but a vague longing in some way to break down that proud 
serenity which galled her so sharply, and bring hot blood 
of shame into that delicate face, and cast indignity on that 
imperious and unassailable pride, consumed her. 

She longed to do as some girl of whom she had once 
been told by an old Invalide had done in the ’89 — a girl of 
the people, a fisher-girl of the Cannebiere, who had loved 
one above her rank, a noble who deserted her for a woman 
of his own order, a beautiful, soft-skinned, lily-like scorn- 
ful aristocrat, with the silver ring of merciless laughter and 
the languid luster of sweet contemptuous eyes. The Mar- 
seillaise bore her wrong in silence — she was a daughter of 
the south- and of the populace, with a dark, brooding, 
burning beauty, strong and fierce, and braced with the salt 
lashing of the sea and with the keen breath of the stormy 
mistral. She held her peace while the great lady was 
wooed and won, while the marriage joys came with the 
purple vintage time, while the people were made drunk at 
the bridal of their chatelaine in those hot, ruddy, luscious 
autumn days. 

She held her peace; and the Terror came, and the 
streets of the city by the sea ran blood, and the scorch of 
the sun blazed, every noon, on the scaffold. Then she had 
her vengeance. She stood and saw the axe fall down on 
the proud snow-white neck that never had bent till it bent 
there, and she drew the severed head into her own bronzed 
hands and smote the lips his lips had kissed, a cruel blow 
that blurred their beauty out, and twined a fish-hook in 
the long and glistening hair, and drew it, laughing as she 
went, through dust, and mire, and gore, and over the 
rough stones of the town, and through the shouting crowds 
of the multitudes, and tossed it out on to the sea, laughing 
still as the waves flung it out from billow to billow, and 
the fish sucked it down to make their feast. “ Voilct tes 
secondes noces /” she cried where she stood, and laughed 
by the side of the gray angry water, watching the tresses 
of the floating hair sink downward like a heap of sea- 
tossed weed. 

That horrible story came to the memory of Cigarette 
now as it had been told her by the old soldier who, in his 


the desert hawk and the paradise-bird. 571 

boyhood, had seen the entry of the Marseillais to Paris. 
She knew what the woman of the people had felt when she 
had bruised and mocked and thrown out to the devouring 
waters that fair and fallen head. 

“I could do it — I could do it,” she thought, with the 
savage instinct of her many-sided nature dominant, leav- 
ing uppermost only its ferocity — the same ferocity as had 
moved the southern woman to wreak her hatred on the 
senseless head of her rival. The school in which the child- 
soldier had been reared had been one to foster all those 
barbaric impulses, to leave in their inborn uncontrolled force 
all those native desires which the human shares with the 
animal nature. There had been no more to teach her that 
these were criminal or forbidden than there is to teach the 
young tigress that it is cruel to tear the antelope for food. 
What Cigarette was, that nature had made her; she was 
no more trained to self-control, or to the knowledge of 
good, than is the tiger’s cub as it wantons in its play under 
the great broad tropic leaves. 

Now, she acted on her impulse ; her impulse of open 
scorn of rank, of reckless vindication of her right to do 
just whatsoever pleasured her; and she went boldly for- 
ward and dashed aside, with no gentle hand, the folds that 
hung before the entrance of the tent, and stood there with 
the gleam of the starry night and the glow of the torches 
behind her, so that her picturesque and brightly-colored 
form looked painted on a dusky lurid background of shadow 
and of flame. 

The action startled the occupants of the tent, and made 
them both look up ; they were Venetia Corona and a Le- 
vantine woman, who was her favorite and most devoted at- 
tendant, and had been about her from her birth. The tent 
was the first of three set aside for her occupance, and had 
been adorned with as much luxury as was procurable, and 
with many of the rich and curious things of Algerian art 
and workmanship, so far as they could be hastily collected 
by the skill and quickness of the French intendance. 
Cigarette stood silently looking at the scene on which she 
had thus broken without leave or question ; she saw nothing 
of it except one head lifted in surprise at her entrance — ■ 
just such a head, just so proudly carried, just so crowned 


572 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


with gleaming hair as that which the Marseillaise had 
dragged through the dust of the streets and cast out to 
the lust of the sharks. Venetia hesitated a moment in as- 
tonished wonder ; then, with the grace and the courtesy of 
her race, rose and approached the entrance of her tent, in 
which that figure, half a soldier, half a child, was stand- 
ing, with the fitful reddened light behind. She recognized 
whose it was. 

“ Is it you, via petite she said kindly. u Come within. 
Do not be afraid ” 

She spoke with the gentle consideration of a great lady 
to one whom she admired for her heroism, compassionated 
for her position, and thought naturally in need of such 
encouragement. She had liked the frank, fearless, ardent 
brunette face of the Little Friend of the Flag; she had 
liked her fiery and indomitable defense of the soldier of 
Zaraila ; she felt an interest in her as deep as her pity, and 
she was above the scruples which many women of her rank 
might have had as to the fitness of entering into conversa- 
tion with this child of the army. She was gentle to her 
as to a young bird, a young kitten, a young colt; what 
her brother had said of the vivandiere’s love for one whom 
the girl only knew as a trooper of Chasseurs filled with an 
indefinable compassion the woman whe knew him as her 
own equal and of her own Order. 

Cigarette, for once, answered nothing; her eyes very 
lowering, burning, savage. 

“You wish to see me?” Venetia asked once more. 
“Come nearer. Have no fear v 

The one word unloosed the spell which had kept Cigar- 
ette speechless; the one word was an insult beyond endu- 
rance, that lashed all the worst spirit in her into flame. 

“Fear!” she cried, with a camp oath, whose blasphemy 
was happily unintelligible to her listener. “Fear! You 
think I fear you ! — the darling of the army, who saved the 
squadron at Zaraila, who has seen a thousand days of 
bloodshed, who has killed as many men with her own hand 
as any Lascar among them all — fear you , you hothouse 
flower, you paradise- bird, you silver pheasant, who never 
did aught but spread your dainty colors in the sun, and 
never earned so much as the right to eat a piece of black 


T.^TE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD 573 


bread, if you had your deserts ! Fear you 1 ! Why l 

Do you not know that I could kill you where you stand as 
easily as I could wring the neck of any one of those gold- 
winged orioles that flew above your head to-day, and who 
have more right to live than you, for they do at least labor 
in their own fashion for their food, and their drink, and 
their dwelling? Dieu de Dieu 1 Why, I have killed Arabs, 
I tell you — great gaunt, grim men — and made them bite 
the dust under my fire. Do you think I would check for 
a moment at dealing you death, you beautiful, useless, 
honeyed, poisoned, painted exotic, that has every wind 
tempered to you, and thinks the world only made to bear 
the fall of your foot I” 

The fury of words was poured out without pause, and 
with an intense passion vibrating through them ; the wine 
was hot in her veins, the hate was hot in her heart ; her 
eyes glittered with murderous meaning, and she darted 
with one swift bound to the side of the rival she loathed, 
with the pistol half out of her belt; she expected to see 
the one she threatened recoil, quail, hear the threat in ter- 
ror; she mistook the nature with which she dealt. Ycne- 
tia Corona never moved, never gave a sign of the amaze- 
ment that awoke in her ; but she put her hand out and 
clasped the barrel of the weapon, while her eyes looked 
down into the flashing, looming, ferocious ones that men- 
aced her, with calm contemptuous rebuke, in which some- 
thing of infinite pity was mingled. 

“ Child, are you mad V ’ she said gravely. “Brave na- 
tures do not stoop to assassination, which you seem to 
deify. If you have any reason to feel evil against me, tell 
me what it is ; I always repair a wrong if I can. But as 
for those threats, they are most absurd if you do not meau 
them, they are most wicked if you do.” 

The tranquil, unmoved, serious words stilled the vehe- 
ment passion she rebuked with a strange and irresistible 
power; under her gaze the savage lust in Cigarette’s eyes 
died out, and their lids drooped over them ; the dusky 
scarlet color faded from her cheeks ; for the first time in 
her life she felt humiliated, vanquished, awed. If this 
“aristocrat” had shown one sign of fear, one trace of ap- 
prehension, ad her violent and reckless hatred would have 


574 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


reigned on, and, it might have been, have rushed from 
threat to execution ; but showing the only quality, that of 
courage, for which she had respect, her great rival con- 
fused and disarmed her. . She was only sensible, with a 
vivid, agonizing sense of shame, that her only cause of 
latred against this woman was that he loved her. And 
this she would have died a thousand deaths rather than 
have acknowledged. 

She let the pistol pass into Venetian grasp ; and stood, 
irresolute and ashamed, her fluent tongue stricken dumb, 
her intent to wound, and sting, and outrage with every 
vile coarse jest she knew, rendered impossible to execute. 
The purity and the dignity of her opponent’s presence had 
their irresistible influence, an influence too strong for even 
her debonnair and dangerous insolence. She hated herself 
.in that moment more than she hated her rival. 

Yenetia laid the loaded pistol down, away from both, 
and seated herself on the cushions from which she had 
risen. Then she looked once more long and quietly at 
her unknown antagonist. 

“ Well ?” she said, at length. “ Why do you venture to 
come here ? And why do you feel this malignity toward 
a stranger who never saw you until this morning V 9 

Under the challenge the flery spirit of Cigarette rallied, 
though a rare and galling sense of intense inferiority, of 
intense mortification, was upon her; though she would 
almost have given the Cross which was on her breast that 
she had never come into this woman’s sight. 

“ Oh-ke 1” she answered, recklessly, with the red blood 
flushing her face again at the only evasion of truth of which 
the little desperado, with all her sins, had ever been guilty. 
“I hate you, Miladi, because of your Order — because of 
your nation — because of your fine dainty ways — because 
of your aristocrat’s insolence — because you treat my sol- 
diers like paupers — because you are one of those who do 
no more to have the right to live than the purple butterfly 
that flics in the sun, and who oust the people out of their 
dues as the cuckoo kicks the poor birds that have reared 
it, out of the nest of down, to which it never has carried 
a twig or a moss I” 

Her listener heard with a slight smile of amusement and 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 575 

of surprise that bitterly discomfited the speaker. To 
Vcnetia Corona the girl-soldier seemed mad ; but it was 
a madness that interested her, and she knew at a glance 
that this child of the army was of no common nature and 
no common mind. 

“ I do not wish to discuss democracy with you, ,, she 
answered, with a tone that sounded strangely tranquil to 
Cigarette after the scathing acrimony of her own. “I 
should probably convince you, as little as you would con- 
vince me ; and I never waste words. But I heard you to- 
day claim a certain virtue — -justice. How do you reconcile 
with that, your very hasty condemnation of a stranger of 
whose motives, actions, and modes of life it is impossible 
you can have any accurate knowledge ?” 

Cigarette once again was silenced ; her face burned, her 
heart was hot with rage. She had come prepared to up- 
braid and to outrage this patrician with every jibe and 
grossness camp usuage could supply her with, and — she 
stood dumb before her ! She could only feel an all-absorb- 
ing sense of being ridiculous, and contemptible, and puerile 
in her sight. 

“You bring two charges against me,” said Venetia, 
when she had vainly awaited answer. “ That I treat your 
comrades like paupers, and that I rob the people — my own 
people I imagine you to mean — of their dues. In the first, 
how will you prove it? — in the second, how can you know 
it?” 

“Pardieu, Miladi 1” swore Cigarette, recklessly, seeking 
only to hold her own against the new sense of inferiority 
and of inability that oppressed her. “ I was in the hospi- 
tal when your fruits and your wines came ; and as for your 
people, I don’t speak of them — they are all slaves, they 
say, in Albion, and will bear to be yoked like oxen if they 
think they can turn any gold in the furrows 1 — I speak of 
the people. Of the toiling, weary, agonized, joyless, hap- 
less multitudes who labor on, and on, and on, ever in dark- 
ness, that such as you may bask in sunlight and take your 
pleasures wrung out of the death-sweat of millions of work- 
murdered poor ! What right have you to have your path 
strewn with roses, and every pain spared from you ; to only 
lift your voice and say, ‘Let that be done,’ to see it done ? 


576 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


— to find life one long sweet summer day of gladness and 
abundance, while they die out in agony by thousands, ague- 
stricken, famine-stricken, crime-stricken, age-stricken, for 
want only of one ray of the light of happiness that falls 
from dawn to dawn like gold upon your head ?” 

Vehement and exaggerated as the upbraiding was, her 
hearer’s face grew very grave, very thoughtful, as she 
spoke ; those luminous earnest eyes, whose power even the 
young democrat felt, gazed wearily down into hers. 

“Ah, child ! do you think we never think of that? You 
wrong me — you wrong my Order. There are many besides 
myself who turn over that terrible problem as despairingly 
as you can ever do. As far as in us lies, we strive to 
remedy its evil ; the uttermost effort can do but little, but 
that little is only lessened — fearfully lessened — whenever 
Class is arrayed against Class by that blind antagonism 
which animates yourself.” 

Cigarette’s intelligence was too rapid not to grasp the 
truths conveyed by these words ; but she was in no mood 
to acknowledge them. 

“Nona de Dieu, Miladi !” she swore in her teeth. “ If 
you do turn over the problem — you aristocrats — it is pretty 
work, no doubt ! just putting the bits of a puzzle-ball to- 
gether so long as the game pleases you, and leaving the 
puzzle in chaos when you are tired 1 jQh-he ! I know how 
fine ladies and fine gentlemen play at philanthropies 1 But 
I am a child of the People, mark you ; and I only see how 
birth is an angel that gives such as you eternal sunlight 
and eternal summer, and how birth is a devil that drives 
down the millions into a pit of darkness, of crime, of igno- 
rance, of misery, of suffering, where they are condemned 
before they have opened their eyes to existence, where 
they are sentenced before they have left their mothers’ 
bosoms in infancy. You do not know what that darkness 
is. It is night — it is ice — it is hell !” 

Venetia Corona sighed wearily as she heard ; pain had 
been so far from her own life, and there was an intense 
eloquence in the low deep \yords that seemed to thrill 
through the stillness. 

“Nor do you know how fhany shadows checker that 
light which you envy 1 But I have said; it is useless for 


the desert hawk and the paradise-bird. 577 

tne to argue these questions with you. You commence 
with a hatred of a class ; all justice is over wherever that 
element enters. If I were what you think, I should bid 
you leave my presence which you have entered so rudely. 
I do not desire to do that. I am sure that the heroine of 
Zaraila has something nobler in her than mere malignity 
against a person who can never have injured her; and I 
would endure her insolence for the sake of awakening her 
justice. A virtue, that was so great in her at noon, cannot 
be utterly dead at nightfall ?” 

Cigarette’s fearless eyes drooped under the gaze of those 
bent so searchingly, yet so gently, upon her ; but only for 
a moment : she raised them afresh with their old dauntless 
frankness. 

“ Dieu I you shall never say you wanted justice and truth 
from a French soldier, and failed to get them ! I hate you, 
never mind why : — I do, though you never harmed me. I 
came here for two reasons : one, because I wanted to look 
at you close — you are not like anything that I ever saw ; 
the other, because I wanted to wound you, to hurt you, to 
outrage you, if I could find a way how. And you will 
not let me do it. I do not know what it is in you.’ ? 

In all her courted life, the great lady had had no truer 
homage than lay in that irate reluctant wonder of this 
fiery foe. 

She smiled slightly. 

“My poor child, it is rather something in yourself — a 
native nobility that will not allow you to be as unjust and 
as insolent as your soul desires ” 

Cigarette gave a movement of intolerable impatience : 

“ Pardieu ! do not pity me, or I shall give you a taste 
of my ‘insolence’ in earnest! You may be a sovereign 
grande dame everywhere else, but you can carry no terror 
with you for me, I promise you !” 

“ I do not seek to do so. If I did not feel interest in 
you, do you suppose I should suffer for a moment the 
ignorant rudenes of an ill-bred child ? You fail in the 
tact, as in the courtesy, that belong to your nation.” 

The rebuke was gentle, but it was all the more severe 
for its very serenity. It cut Cigarette to the quick ; it 
covered her with an overwhelming sense of mortification 
2 M 49 


578 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


and of failure. She was too keen and too just, despite all 
her vanity, not to feel that she deserved the condemnation, 
and not to know that her opponent had all the advantage 
and all the justice on her side. She had done nothing by 
coming here ; nothing except to appear as an insolent and 
wayward child before her superb rival, and to feel a very 
anguish of inferiority before the grace, the calm, the beauty, 
the nameless potent charm of this woman, whom she had 
intended to humiliate and injure ! 

The inborn truth within her, the native generosity and 
candor that soon or late always overruled every other ele- 
ment in the Little One, conquered her now. She dashed 
down her Cross on the ground and trod passionately on 
the decoration she adored: 

“I disgrace it the first day I wear it! You are right, 
though I hate you, and you are as beautiful as a sorceress ! 
There is no wonder he loves you !” 

“He! Who?” 

There was a colder and more utterly amazed hauteur in 
the interrogation than had come into her voice throughout 
the interview, yet on her fair face a faint warmth rose. 

The words were out, and Cigarette was reckless what 
she said; almost unconscious, indeed, in the violence of 
the many emotions in her. 

“ The man who carves the toys you give your dog to 
break !” she answered bitterly. “ Dieu de Dieu ! he loves 
you. When he was down with his wounds after Zaraila, 
he said so; but he never knew what he said, and he never 
knew that I heard him. You are like the women of his 
old world ; though through you he got treated like a dog, 
he loves you !” 

“ Of whom do you venture to speak ?” 

The cold calm dignity of the question, whose very tone 
was a rebuke, came strangely after the violent audacity of 
Cigarette’s speech. 

“ Sacre bleu ! of him, I tell you, who was made to bring 
his wares to you like a hawker. And you think it insult, 
I will warrant 1 — insult for a soldier who has nothing but 
his courage, and his endurance, and his heroism under 
suffering to ennoble him, to dare to love Madame la Prin- 
cesse Corona ! I think otherwise. I think that Madame 


THE DESERT nAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 579 

la Princesse Corona never had a love of so much honor, 
though she has had princes and nobles and all the men of 
her rank, no doubt, at her feet, through that beauty that is 
like a spell 1” 

Hurried headlong by her own vehemence, and her own 
hatred for her rivart which drove her to magnify the worth 
of the passion of which she was so jealous, that she might 
lessen, if she could, the pride of her on whom it was lav- 
ished, she never paused to care what she said, or heed 
what its consequences might become. She felt incensed, 
amazed, irritated, to see no trace of any emotion come 
on her hearer’s face ; the hot, impetuous, expansive, un- 
trained nature underrated the power for self-command of 
the Order she so blindly hated. 

“You speak idly and at random, like the child you are,” 
the grande dame answered her with chill contemptuous 
rebuke. “I do not imagine that the person you allude to 
made you his confidante in such a matter?” 

“ He !” retorted Cigarette. “He belongs to your class, 
Miladi. He is as silent as the grave. You might kill him, 
and he would never show it hurt. I only know what he 
muttered in his fever.” 

“When you attended him?” 

“ Not I !” cried Cigarette, who saw for the first time that 
she was betraying herself. “He lay in the scullion’s tent 
where I was ; that was all ; and he was delirious with the 
shot-wounds. Men often are ” 

“Wait I Hear me a little while, before you rush on in 
this headlong and foolish speech,” interrupted her auditor, 
who had in a moment’s rapid thought decided on her 
course with this strange wayward nature. “You err in 
the construction you have placed on the words, whatever 
they were, which you heard. The gentleman — he is a gen- 
tleman — whom you speak of bears me no love. We are 
almost strangers. But, by a strange chain of circumstances 
he is connected with my family; he once had great friend- 
ship with my brother; for reasons that I do not know, but 
which are imperative with him, he desires to keep his identity 
unsuspected by every one; an accident alone revealed it to 
me, and I have promised him not to divulge it. You un- 
derstand ?” 


680 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Cigarette gave an affirmative gesture. Her eyes were 
fastened suddenly, yet with a deep bright glow in them, 
upon her companion ; she was beginning to see her way 
through his secret — a secret she was too intrinsically loyal 
even now to dream of betraying. 

“You spoke very nobly for him to day. You have the 
fealty of one brave character to another, I am sure ?” pur- 
sued Yenetia Corona, purposely avoiding all hints of any 
warmer feeling on her listener’s part, since she saw how 
tenacious the girl was of any confession of it. “ You would 
do him service if you could, I fancy; am I right?” 

“Oh yes 1” answered Cigarette, with an over-assumption 
of carelessness. “He is bon-zig ; we always help each 
other. Besides, he is very good to my men. What is it 
you want of me ?” 

“To preserve secrecy on what I have told you for his 
sake; and to give him a message from me.” 

Cigarette laughed scornfully ; she was furious with her- 
self for standing obediently like a chidden child to hear 
this patrician’s bidding, and to do her will. And yet, try 
how she would, she could not shake off the spell under 
which those grave, sweet, lustrous eyes of command held her. 

“Pardieu, Miladi! Do you think I babble like any 
young bleu drunk with his first measure of wine ? As tor 
your message, you had better let him come and hear what 
you have to say; I cannot promise to remember it !” 

“Your answer is reckless; I want a serious one. You 
spoke like a brave and a just friend to him to-day ; are you 
willing to act as such to-night? You have come here 
strangely, rudely, without pretext or apology ; but I think 
better of you than you would allow me to do if I judged 
cnly from the surface. I believe that you have loyalty, as 
I know that you have courage.” 

Cigarette set her teeth hard. 

“ What of that ? I have them en militaire, that is all.” 

“ This of it. That one who has them will never cherish 
ma,lice unjustifiably, or fail to fulfill a trust.” 

Cigarette’s clear brown skin grew very red. 

“That is true,” she muttered, reluctantly. Her better 
nature was growing uppermost, though she strove hard to 
keep the evil one predominant. 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 581 

“ Then you will cease to feel hatred toward rae for so 
senseless a reason as that I belong to an aristocracy that 
offends you ; and you will remain silent on what I tell you 
concerning the one whom you know as Louis Victor ?” 

Cigarette nodded assent; the sullen fire-glow still burnt 
in her eyes, but she succumbed to the resistless influence 
which the serenity, the patience, and the dignity of this 
woman had over her. She was studying Venetia Corona 
all this while with the keen rapid perceptions of envy and 
of jealousy, studying her features, her form, her dress, her 
attitude, all the many various and intangible marks of 
birth and breeding which were so new to her, and which 
made her rival seem so strange, so dazzling, so marvelous 
a sorceress to her ; and all the while the sense of her own in- 
feriority, her own worthlessness, her own boldness, her own 
debasement was growing upon her, eating sharply as aqua 
fortis into brass, into the metal of her vanity and her pride, 
humiliating her unbearably, yet making her heart ache 
with a sad pathetic pity for herself. 

“ He is of your Order, then ?” she asked, abruptly. 

“ He was — yes.” 

“Oh-he 1” cried Cigarette, with her old irony. “ Then 
he must be always, musn’t he ? You think too much of 
your blue blood, you patricians, to fancy it can lose its 
royalty, whether it run under a King’s purple or a Roumi’s 
canvas shirt. Blood tells, they say 1 Well, perhaps it 
does. Some say my father was a Prince of France ; — may 
be 1 So, he is of your Order ? Bah ! I knew that the 
first day I saw his hands. Do you want me to tell you 
why he lives among us, buried like this ?” 

“ Not if you violate any confidence to do so.” 

“ Pardieu ! he makes no confidence, I promise you. Not 
ten words will Monseigneur say, if he can help it, about 
anything. He is as silent as a lama ; it is populacier to 
talk! But we learn things without being told in camp; 
and I know well enough he is here to save some one else, 
in some one’s place ; it is a sacrifice , look you, that nails 
him down to this martyrdom.” 

Her auditor was silent; she thought as the vivandiere 
thought, but the pride in her, the natural reticence and re- 
serve of her class, made her shrink from discussing the his« 
49 * 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


i>82 

tory of one whom she knew — shrink from having any ar 
gnment on his past or future with a saucy, rough, fiery 
young camp-follower, who had broken thus unceremoniously 
on her privacy. Yet she needed greatly to be able to 
trust Cigarette ; the child was the only means through 
which she could send him a warning that must be sent; 
and there were a bravery and a truth in her which attracted 
the “ aristocrat,” to whom she was as singular and novel a 
rarity as though she were some young savage of desert 
western isles. 

“Look you, Miladi,” said Cigarette, half sullenly, half 
passionately, for the words were wrenched out of her gen- 
erosity, and choked her in their utterance, “that man suf- 
fers : his life here is a hell upon earth — I don’t mean for 
the danger, he is bon soldat ; but for the indignity, the 
subordination, the license, the brutality, the tyranny. He 
is as if he were chained to the galleys. He never says 
anything, oh no ! he is of your kind, you know 1 But he 
suffers. Mort de Dieu 1 he suffers. Now, if you be his 
friend, can you do nothing for him ? Can you ransom him 
in no way ? Can you go away out of Africa and leave 
him in this living death to get killed and thrust into the 
sand, like his comrade the other day ?” 

Her hearer did not answer ; the words made her heart 
ache ; they cut her to the soul. It was not for the first 
time that the awful desolation of his future had been pres- 
ent before her ; but it was the first time that the fate to 
which she would pass away and^eave him had been so di- 
rectly in words before her. Cigarette, obeying the gen-, 
erous impulses of her better nature, and abandoning self 
with the same reckless impetuosity with which a moment 
before she would, if she could, have sacrificed her rival, 
saw the advantage gained, and pursued it with rapid skill. 
She was pleading against herself; no matter, in that in- 
stant she was capable of crucifying herself, and only remem- 
bering mercy to the absent. 

“ I have heard,” she went on, vehemently, for the utter- 
ance to which she forced herself was very cruel to her, 
“that you of the Noblesse are stanch as steel to your own 
people. It is the best virtue that you have. Well, he is 
of your people. Will you go away iu your negligent in- 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. ft 83 


difference, and leave him to eat his heart out in bitterness 
and misery ? He was your brother’s friend ; he was known 
to you in his early time; you have said so. And you are 
cold enough and cruel enough, Miladi, not to make one 
effort to redeem him out of bondage ? — to go back to your 
palaces, and your pleasures, and your luxuries, and your 
flatteries, and be happy, while this man is left on bearing 
his yoke here ? — and it is a yoke that galls, that kills ! — . 
bearing it until, in some day of desperation, he rebels, and 
is shot like a dog ; or, in some day of mercy, a naked blade 
cuts its way to his heart, and makes its pulse cease forever ? 
If you do, you patricians are worse still than I thought you !” 

Venetia heard her without interruption; a great sad- 
ness came over her face as the vivid phrases followed each 
other. She was too absorbed in the subject of them tc 
heed the challenge and the insolence of their manner. She 
knew that the Little One who spoke them loved him, 
though so tenacious to conceal her love; and she was 
touched, not less by the magnanimity which, for his sake, 
sought to release him from the African service, than by 
the hopelessness of his coming years as thus prefigured 
before her. 

“Your reproaches are unneeded,” she replied, slowly 
and wearily. “I could not abandon one who was once 
the friend of my family to such a fate as you picture with- 
out very great pain. But I do not see how to alter this 
fate, as you think I could do with so much ease. I am not 
in its secret; I do not know the reason of its seeming 
suicide; I have no more connection with its intricacies 
than you have. This gentleman has chosen his own 
path ; it is not for me to change his choice or spy into 
his motives.” 

Cigarette’s flashing searching eyes bent all their brown 
light on her. 

“Madame Corona, you are courageous; to those who 
are so, all things are possible.” 

“A great fallacy! You must have seen many coura- 
geous men vanquished. But what would you imply by it?” 

“That you can help this man if you will.” 

“Would that I could; but I can discern no means ” 

“Make them.” 


584 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Even in that moment her listener smiled involuntarily 
at the curt imperious tones, decisive as Napoleon’s “Par- 
tons!” before the Passage of the Alps. 

“Be certain, if I can, I will. Meantime, there is one 
pressing danger of which you must be my medium to warn 
him. He and my brother must not meet. Tell him that 
the latter, knowing him only as Louis Victor, and inter- 
ested in the incidents of his military career, will seek 
him out early to-morrow morning before we quit the camp. 
I must leave it to him to avoid the meeting as best he may 
be able.” 

Cigarette smiled grimly. 

“You do not know much of the camp. Victor is only 
a bas-officier ; if his officers call him up, he must come, or 
be thrashed like a slave for contumacy. He has no will of 
his own.” 

Venetia gave an irrepressible gesture of pain. 

“True; I forgot. Well, go and send him to me. My 
brother must be taken into his confidence, whatever that 
confidence reveals. I will tell him so. Go and send him 
to me; it is the last chance.” 

Cigarette gave no movement of assent; all the jealous 
rage in her flared up afresh to stifle the noble and unself- 
ish instincts under which she had been led during the 
later moments. A coarse and impudent scoff rose to her 
tongue, but it remained unuttered ; she could not speak it 
under that glance, which held the evil in her in subjection, 
and compelled her reluctant reverence against her will. 

“ Tell him to come here to me,” repeated Venetia, with the 
calm decision of one to whom any possibility of false in- 
terpretation of her motives never occurred, and who was 
habituated to the free action that accompanied an unas- 
sailable rank. “My brother must know what I know. 1 
shall be alone, and he can make his way hither, without 
doubt, unobserved. Go and say this to him. You are his 
loyal little friend and comrade.” 

“If I be, I do not see why I am to turn your lackey, 
Madame,” said Cigarette, bitterly. “ If you want him, you 
can send for him by other messengers !” 

Venetia Corona looked at her steadfastly, with a certain 
contempt in the look. 


THE DESERT HAWK AND THE PARADISE-BIRD. 586 

“ Then your pleading for him was all insincere ? Let the 
matter drop, and be good enough to leave my presence, 
which, you will remember, you entered unsummoned and 
undesired. ” 

The undeviating gentleness of the tone made the rebuke 
cut deeper, as her first rebuke had cut, than any sterner 
censure or more peremptory dismissal could have done. 
Cigarette stood irresolute, ashamed, filled with rage, torn 
by contrition, impatient, wounded, swayed by jealous rage 
and by the purer impulses she strove to stifle. 

The Cross she had tossed down caught her sight as it 
glittered on the carpet strewn over the hard earth; she 
stooped and raised it; the action sufficed to turn the tide 
with her impressionable, ardent, capricious nature: she 
would not disgrace that. 

“I will go,” she muttered in her throat; “and you — . 

you 0 God ! no wonder men love you when even I 

cannot hate you !” 

Almost ere the words were uttered she had dashed aside 
the hangings before the tent entrance, and had darted out 
into the night air. Yenetia Corona gazed after the swiftly 
flying figure as it passed over the starlit ground, lost in 
amazement, in pity, and in regret, wondering afresh if she 
had only dreamt of this strange interview in the Algerian 
camp, which seemed to have come and gone with the blind- 
ing rapidity of lightning. 

“A little tigress 1” she thought; “and yet with infinite 
nobility, with wonderful germs of good in her. Of such a 
nature what a rare life might have been made ! As it is, 
her childhood we smile at and forgive; but, great 
Heaven 1 what will be her maturity, her old age ! Yet 
how she loves him ! And she is so brave she will not 
show it.” 

With the recollection came the remembrance of Cigar- 
ette’s words as to his own passion for herself, and she 
grew paler as it did so. “ God forbid he should have that 
pain too !” she murmured. “ What could it be save misery 
for us both ?” 

Yet she did not thrust the fancy from her with con- 
temptuous nonchalance as she had done every other of 
the many passions she had excited and disdained ; it had 


586 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


a great sadness and a greater terror for her. She dreaded 
it unspeakably for him ; &lso, perhaps, unconsciously, she 
dreaded it slightly for herself. 

She wished now that she had not sent for him. But it 
was done; x it was for sake of their old friendship; and she 
was not one to vainly regret what was unalterable, or to 
desert what she deemed generous and right for the con- 
siderations of prudence or of egotism. 


CHAPTER XXXY. 

ORDEAL BY FIRE. 

Amid the mirth, the noise, the festivity, which reigned 
throughout the camp as the men surrendered themselves 
to the enjoyment of the largesses of food and of wine 
allotted to them by their Marshal’s command in com- 
memoration of Zaraila, one alone remained apart, silent 
and powerless to rouse himself even to the forced sem- 
blance, the forced endurance, of their mischief and their 
pleasure. They knew him well, and they also loved him 
too well to press such participation on him. They knew 
that it was no lack of sympathy with them that made him 
so grave amid their mirth, so mute amid their volubility. 
Some thought that he was sorely wounded by the delay of 
the honors promised him. Others, who knew him better, 
thought that it was the loss of liis brother-exile which 
weighed on him, and made all the scene around him full 
of pain. None approached him; but while they feasted iu 
their tents, making the celebration of Zaraila equal to the 
Jour de Mazagran, he sat alone over a picket-fire on the 
far outskirts of the camp. 

His heart was sick within him. To remain here was to 
risk with every moment that ordeal of recognition which 
he so unutterably dreaded ; and to flee was to leave his 
name to the men, with whom he had served so long, 


ORDEAL BY EIRE. 


58T 

covered with obloquy and odium, buried under all the burning 
shame and degradation of a traitor’s and deserter’s memory. 
The latter course was impossible to him ; the only alterna- 
tive was to trust that the vastness of that great concrete 
body, of which he was one unit, would suffice to hide him 
from the discovery of the friend whose love he feared as 
he feared the hatred of no foe. He had not been seen as 
he had passed the flag-staff; there was little fear that in 
the few remaining hours any chance could bring the illus- 
trious guest of a Marshal to the outpost of the scattered 
camp. 

Yet he shuddered as he sat in the glow of the fire of pine- 
wood; she was so near, and he could not behold herl — 
though he might never see her face again ; though they 
must pass out of Africa, home to the land that he desired 
as only exiles can desire, while he still remained silent, 
knowing that, until death should release him, there could 
be no other fate for him, save only this one, hard, bitter, 
desolate, uncompanioned, unpitied, unrewarded life. But 
to break his word as the price of his freedom was not 
possible to his nature or in his creed. This fate was, in 
chief, of his own making : he accepted it without rebellion, 
because rebellion would have been in this case both cow- 
ardice and self-pity. 

He was not conscious of any heroism in this; it seemed 
to him the only course left to a man who, in losing the 
position, had not abandoned the instincts of a gentleman. 

The evening wore away, unmeasured by him ; the echoes 
of the soldiers’ mirth came dimly on his ear; the laughter, 
and the songs, and the music were subdued into one con- 
fused murmur by distance; there was nothing near him 
except a few tethered horses, and far away the mounted 
figure of the vidette who kept watch beyond the boundaries 
of the encampment. The fire burned on, for it had been 
piled high before it was abandoned ; the little white dog 
of his regiment was curled at his feet ; he sat motionless, 
sunk in thought, with his head drooped upon his breast. 
The voice of Cigarette broke on his musing. 

“Beau sire, you are wanted yonder.” 

He looked up wearily : could he never be at peace ? He 
did not notice that the tone of the greeting was rough and 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


588 

curt; he did not notice that there was a stormy darkness, 
a repressed bitterness, stern and scornful, on the Little 
One’s face; he only thought that the very dogs were left 
sometimes at rest and unchained, but a soldier never. 

“You are wanted!” repeated Cigarette, with imperious 
contempt. 

lie rose, on the old instinct of obedience. 

“For what?” 

She stood looking at him without replying; her mouth 
was tightly shut in a hard line that pressed inward all its 
soft and rosy prettiness. She was seeing how haggard his 
face was, how heavy his eyes, how full of fatigue his move- 
ments. Her silence recalled him to the memory of the 
past day. 

“ Forgive me, my dear child, if I have seemed without 
sympathy in all your honors,” he said, gently, as he laid 
his hand on her shoulder. “Believe me, it was uninten- 
tional. No one knows better than I how richly you de- 
served them; no one rejoices more that you should have 
received them.” 

The very gentleness of the apology stung her like a 
scorpion ; she shook herself roughly out of his hold. 

“ Point de phrases! All the army is at my back ; do 
you think I cannot do without you? Sympathy too! 
Bah! We don’t know those fine words in camp. You 
are wanted, I tell you ; — go!” 

“ But where ?” 

“ To your Silver Pheasant yonder ; — go !” 

“Who? I do not ” 

“ Dame ! Can you not understand ? Miladi wants to 
see you; I told her I would send you to her. You can 
use your dainty sentences with her; she is of your Order !” 

“What! she wishes ” 

“Go!” reiterated the Little One with a stamp of her 
boot. “You know the great tent where she is throned in 
honor — Morbleu ! — as if the oldest and ugliest hag that 
washes out my soldiers’ linen were not of more use and 
more deserved such lodgment than Madame la Princesse, 
who has never done aught in her life, not even brushed 
out her own hair of gold ! She waits for you. Where are 
your palace manners ? Go to her, I tell you. She is of 
your own people : we are not !” 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


589 


The vehement imperious phrases coursed in disorder 
one after another, rapid and harsh, and vibrating with a 
hundred repressed emotions. He paused one moment, 
doubting whether she did not play some trick upon him; 
then, without a word, left her, and went rapidly through 
the evening shadows. 

Cigarette stood looking after him with a gaze that was 
very evil, almost savage, in its wrath, in its pain, in its 
fiery jealousy, that ached so hotly in her, and was chained 
down by that pride, which was as intense in the Vivandiere 
of Algeria as ever it could be iu any Duchess of a Court. 
Heckless, unfeminine, hardened, vitiated in much, as all 
her sex would have deemed, and capable of the utmost 
abandonment to her passion had it been returned, the 
haughty young soul of the child of the People was as sensi- 
tively delicate in this one thing as the purest and chastest 
among women could have been ; she dreaded above every 
other thing that he should ever suspect that she loved him, 
or that she desired his love. 

ITer honor, her generosity, her pity for him, her natural 
instinct to do the thing that was right, even to her foes, 
any one of the unstudied and unanalyzed qualities in her 
had made her serve him even at her rival’s bidding. But 
it had cost her none the less hardly because so manfully 
done; none the less did all the violent ruthless hate, the 
vivid childlike fury, the burning, intolerable jealousy of 
her nature combat in her with the cruel sense of her own 
unlikeness with that beauty which had subdued even her- 
self, and with that nobler impulse of self-sacrifice which 
grew side by side with the baser impulses of passion. 

As she crouched down by the side of the fire, all the 
gracious spiritual light that had been upon her face was 
gone; there was something of the goaded, dangerous, 
sullen ferocity of a brave animal hard pressed and over- 
driven. 

Her native generosity, the loyal disinterestedness of her 
love for him, had overborne the jealousy, the wounded 
vanity, and the desire of vengeance that reigned in her. 
Carried away by the first, she had, for the hour, risen 
above the last, and allowed the nobler wish to serve and 
rescue him prevail over the baser egotism. Nothing with 

50 


59 !) 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


her was ever premeditated ; all was the offspring of the 
caprice or tne impulse of the immediate moment. And 
now the reaction followed : she was only sensible of the 
burning envy that consumed her of this woman who seemed 
to her more than mortal in her wonderful fair loveliness, in 
her marvelous difference from everything of their sex that 
the camp and the barrack ever showed. 

“And I have sent him to her when I should have fired 
my pistol into her breast!” she thought, as she sat by the 
dying embers. And she remembered once more the story 
of the Marseilles fisher-woman. She understood that ter- 
rible vengeance under the hot southern sun, beside the 
ruthless southern seas. 

Meanwhile, he, who so little knew or heeded how he oc- 
cupied her heart, passed unnoticed through the movements 
of the military crowds, crossed the breadth that parted the 
encampment from the marquees of the Generals and their 
guests, gave the countersign and approached unarrested, 
and so far unseen save by the sentinels, the tents of the 
Corona suite. The Marshal tmd his male visitors were 
still over their banquet wines ; she had withdrawn early, 
on the plea of fatigue; there was no one to notice his 
visit except the men on guard, who concluded that he 
went by command. In the dusky light, for the moon was 
very young, and the flare of the torches made the shadows 
black and uncertain, no one recognized him ; the few 
soldiers stationed about saw one of their own troopers, and 
offered him no opposition, made him no question. II*' 
knew the password ; that was sufficient. The Levantine 
waiting near the entrance drew the tent-folds aside and 
signed to him to enter; another moment, and he was in the 
presence of her mistress, in that dim amber light from the 
standing candelabra, in that heavy soft-scented air per- 
fumed from the aloe-wood burning in a brazier, through 
which he saw, half blinded at first coming from the dark- 
ness without, that face which subdued and dazzled even 
the antagonism and the lawlessness of Cigarette. 

He bowed low before her, preserving that distant cere- 
monial due from the rank he ostensibly held to hers. 

“ Madame, this is very merciful ! I know not how to 
thank you.” 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


591 


She motioned to him to take a seat near to her, while 
the Levantine, who knew nothing of the English tongue, 
retired to the farther end of the tent. 

'‘I only kept my word,” she answered, “for we leave 
the camp to-morrow; Africa next week.” 

‘ So soon !” 

She saw the blood forsake the bronzed fairness of his 
face, and leave a dusky pallor there. It wounded her a3 
if she suffered herself. For the first time she believed what 
the Little One had said; — that this man loved her. 

“I sent for you,” she continued, hurriedly, her graceful 
languor and tranquillity, for the first time, stirred and 
quickened by emotion, almost by embarrassment. “It was 
very strange, it was very painful, for me to trust that child 
with such a message. But you know us of old ; you know 
we do not forsake our friends for considerations of self- 
interest or outward semblance. We act as we deem right; 
we do not heed untrue constructions. There are many 
things I desire to say to you ” 

She paused; he merely bent his head; he could not trust 
the calmness of his voice in answer. 

“ First,” she continued, “ I must entreat you to allow 
me to tell Philip what I know. You cannot conceive how 
intensely oppressive it becomes to me to have any secret 
from him. I never concealed so much as a thought from 
my brother in all my life, and to evade even a mute ques- 
tion from his brave frank eyes makes me feel a traitress to 
him.” 

“Anything else,” he muttered. “Ask me anything else. 
For God’s sake, do not let him dream that I live!” 

“ But why ? You still speak to me in enigmas. To- 
morrow, moreover, before we leave, he intends to seek you 
out as what he thinks yon — a soldier of France. He is 
interested by all he hears of your career ; he was first in- 
terested by what I told him of you when he saw the ivory 
carvings at my villa. I asked the little vivandicre to tell 
you this, but, on second thoughts, it seemed best to see 
you myself once more, as I had promised.” 

There was a slow weariness in the utterance of the 
words. She had said that she could not reflect on leaving 
him to such a fate as this of his in Africa without per- 


592 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Bonal suffering, or without an effort to indue- him to re- 
consider his decision to condemn himself to it for ever- 
more. 

“ That French child,” she went on, rapidly, to cover 
both the pain that she felt and that she dealt, “forced her 
entrance here in a strange fashion; she wished to see me, 
I suppose, and to try my courage too. She is a little 
brigand, but she has a true and generous nature, and she 
loves you very loyally.” 

“Cigarette?” he asked, wearily; his thoughts could 
not stay for either pity or interest for her in this moment. 
“Oh no ! — I trust not. I have done nothing to win her 
love ; and she is a fierce little condottiera who disdains all 
such weakness. She forced her way in here ? That was 
unpardonable; but she seems to bear a singular dislike to 
you.” 

“ Singular indeed ! I never saw her until to-day.” 

He answered nothing; the conviction stole on him that 
Cigarette hated her because he loved her. 

“And yet she brought you my message?” pursued his 
.companion. “That seems her nature — violent passions, 
yet thorough loyalty. But time is precious. I must urge 
on you what I bade you come to hear. It is to implore 
you to put your trust, your confidence, in Philip. You 
have acknowledged to me that you are guiltless — no one 
who knows what you once were could ever doubt it for an 
instant — then let him hear this, let him be your judge as 
to what course is right and what wrong for you to pursue. 
It is impossible for me to return to Europe knowing you 
are living thus and leaving you to such a fate. What mo- 
tive you have to sentence yourself to such eternal banish- 
ment I am ignorant; but all I ask of you is, confide in 
him. Let him learn that you live ; let him decide whether 
or not this sacrifice of yourself be needed. His honor is 
as punctilious as that of any man on earth; his friend- 
ship you can never doubt. Why conceal anything from 
him ?” 

His eyes turned on her with that dumb agony which 
once before had chilled her to the soul. 

“Do you think, if I could speak in honor, I should not 
tell you all ?” 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


593 


A flush passed over her face, the first that the gaze of 
any man had ever brought there. She understood him. 

“But,” she said, gently and hurriedly, “may it not be 
that you overrate the obligations of honor ? I know that 
many a noble-hearted man has inexorably condemned him- 
self to a severity of rule that a dispassionate judge of his 
life might deem very exaggerated, very unnecessary. It is 
so natural for an honorable man to so dread that he should 
do a dishonorable thing through self-interest or self-pity, 
that he may very well overestimate the sacrifice required 
of him through what he deems justice or generosity. May 
it not be so with you ? I can conceive no reason that can 
be strong enough to require of you such fearful surrender 
of every hope, such utter abandonment of your own ex- 
istence.” 

Her voice failed slightly over the last words ; she could 
not think with calmness of the destiny that he accepted. 
Involuntarily some prescience of pain that would forever 
pursue her own life unless his were rescued lent an intense 
earnestness, almost entreaty, to her argument. She did 
not bear him love as yet; she had seen too little of him, 
too lately only known him as her equal ; but there were 
in her, stronger than she knew, a pity, a tenderness, a re- 
gret, an honor for him that drew her toward him with an 
indefinable attraction, and w’ould sooner or later warm and 
deepen into love. Already it was sufficient, though she 
deemed it but compassion and friendship, to make her feel 
that an intolerable weight would lie heavy on her future 
if his should remain condemned to this awful isolation and 
oblivion while she alone of all the world should know and 
hold his secret. 

He started from her side as he heard, and paced to and 
fro the narrow limits of the tent like a caged animal. For 
the first time it grew a belief to him, in his thoughts, that 
were he free, were he owner of his heritage, he could rouse 
her heart from its long repose and make her love him with 
the soft and passionate warmth of his dead Arab mistress 
— a thing that had been as distant from her negligence 
and her pride as warmth from the diamoud or the crystal. 
He felt as if the struggle would kill him. He had but to 
betray bis brother, and he would be unchained from his 
2N 50* 


f>91 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


torture; he had but to break his word, and he would be at 
liberty. All the temptation that had before beset him paled 
and grew as naught beside this possibility of the possession 
of her love which dawned upon him now. 

She, knowing nothing of this which moved him, believed 
only that he weighed her words in hesitation, and strove 
to turn the balance. 

“ Hear me,” she said, softly. “ I do not bid you decide ; 
I only bid you confide in Philip — in one who, as you must 
well remember, would sooner cut off his own hand than 
counsel a base thing, or do an unfaithful act. You are 
guiltless of this charge under which you left England ; yon 
endure it rather than do what you deem dishonorable to 
clear yourself. That is noble — that is great. But it is 
possible, as I say, that you may exaggerate the abnega- 
tion required of you. Whoever was the criminal, should 
suffer. Yours is magnificent magnanimity; but it may 
surely be also false justice alike to yourself and the world.” 

He turned on her almost fiercely in the suffering she 
dealt him : 

“It is/ It was a madness — a Quixotism — the wild, un- 
considered act of a fool. What you will ! But it is done ; 
it was done forever — so long ago — when your young eyes 
looked on me in the pity of your innocent childhood. I 
cannot redeem its folly now by adding to its baseness. I 
cannot change the choice of a madman by repenting of it 
with a coward’s caprice. All, God ! you do not know what 
you do — how you tempt. For pity’s sake, urge me no 
more. Help me — strengthen me — to be true to my word. 
Do not bid me do evil that I may enter paradise through 
my sin !” 

He threw himself down beside her as the .incoherent 
words poured out, his arms flung across the pile of cushions 
on which he had been seated, his face hidden on them. His 
teeth clinched on his tongue till the blood flowed ; he felt 
that if the power of speech remained with him he should 
forswear every law that had bound him to silence, and tell 
her all, whatever the cost. 

She looked at him, she heard him, moved to a greater 
agitation than ever had had sway over her, for the first 
time the storm winds that swept by her did not leave her 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


595 


passionless and calm; this man’s whole future was in her 
hands. She could bid him seek happiness, dishonored ; or 
cleave to honor, and accept wretchedness forever. 

It was a fearful choice to hold. 

“Answer me. Choose for me I” he said, vehemently. 
“ Be my law, and be my God 1” 

She gave a gesture almost of fear. 

“ Hush, hush ! The woman does not live who should be 
that to any man.” 

“ You shall be it to me ! Choose for me I” 

“ I cannot 1 You leave so much in darkness and un- 
told ” 

“ Nothing that you need know to decide your choice for 
me, save one thing only — that I love you.” 

She shuddered. 

“ This is madness 1 What have you seen of me ?” 

“ Enough to love you while my life shall last, and love 
no other woman. Ah! I was but an African trooper in 
your sight, but in my own I was your equal. You only 
saw a man to whom your gracious alms and your gentle 
charity w6re to be given, as a queen may stoop in mercy 
to a beggar; but I saw one who had the light of my old 
days in her smile, the sweetness of my old joys in her eyes, 
the memories of my old world in her every grace and ges- 
ture. You forget ! I was nothing to you ; but you were 
so much to me. I loved you the first moment that your 
voice fell on my ear. It is madness ! Oh yes ! I should 
have said so too in those old years. A madness I would 
have sworn never to feel. But I have lived a hard life since 
then, and no men ever love like those who suffer. Now 
you know all ; know the worst that tempts me. No famine, 
no humiliation, no obloquy, no loss I have known, ever 
drove me so cruelly to buy back my happiness with the 
price of dishonor as this one desire, to stand in ray rightful 
place before men, and be free to strive with you for what 
they have not won !” 

As she heard, all the warmth, all the life, faded out of 
her face; it grew as white as his own, and her lips parted 
slightly, as though to draw her breath was oppressive. The 
wild words overwhelmed her with their surprise not less 
than tney shocked her with their despair. An intense 


596 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


truth vibrated through them, a truth that pierced her and 
reached her heart, as no other such supplication ever had 
done. She had no love for him yet, or she thought not ; 
she was very proud, and resisted such passions ; but in 
that moment the thought swept by her that such love 
might be possible. It was the nearest submission to it she 
had ever given. She heard him in unbroken silence; she 
kept silence long after he had spoken. So far as her 
courage and her dignity could be touched with it, she felt 
something akin to terror at the magnitude of the choice 
left to her. 

“You give me great pain, great surprise,” she mur- 
mured. “All I can trust is, that your love is of such sud- 
den birth that it will die as rapidly ” 

He interrupted her : 

“You mean that, under no circumstances — not even 
were I to possess my inheritance — could you give me any 
hope that I might wake your tenderness ?” 

She looked at him full in the eyes with the old, fearless, 
haughty instinct of refusal to all such entreaty, which had 
made her so indifferent — and many said so pitiless — to all. 
At his gaze, however, her own changed and softened, grew 
shadowed, and then wandered from him. 

“ I do not say that. I cannot tell ” 

The words were very low: she was too truthful to con- 
ceal from him what half dawned on herself — the possibility 
that, more in his presence and under different circum- 
stances, she might feel her heart go to him with a warmer 
and a softer impulse than that of friendship. The heroism 
of his life had moved her greatly. 

His head dropped down again upon his arms. 

“0 God! It is possible at least! I am blind — mad. 
Make my choice for me ! 1 know not what I do.” 

The tears that had gathered in her eyes fell slowly down 
over her colorless cheeks; she looked at him with a pity 
that made her heart ache with a sorrow only less than his 
own. The grief was for him chiefly: yet something of it 
for herself. Some sense of present bitterness that fell on 
her from his fate, some foreboding of future regret that 
would inevitably and forever follow her when she left him 
to his loneliness and his misery, smote on her with a 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


597 


weightier pang than any her caressed and cloudless exist- 
ence had encountered. Love was dimly before her as the 
possibility he called it ; remote, unrealized, still unac- 
knowledged, but possible under certain conditions, only 
known as such when it was also impossible through cir- 
cumstances. 

lie had suffered silently; endured strongly; fought 
greatly : these were the only means through which any 
mau could have ever reached her sympathy, her respect, 
her tenderness. Yet though a very noble and a very gen- 
erous woman, she was also a woman of the world. She 
knew that it was not for her to say even thus much to a 
mau who was in one sense well-nigh a stranger, and who 
stood under the accusation of a crime whose shadow he 
allowed to rest on him unmoved. She felt sick at heart: 
she longed unutterably, with a warmer longing than had 
moved her previously, to bid him, at all cost, lay bare his 
past, and throw off the imputed shame that lay on him. 
Yet all the grand traditions of her race forbade her to 
counsel the acceptance of an escape whose way led through 
a forfeiture of honor. 

“Choose for me, Yenetial” he muttered at last once 
more. 

She rose with what was almost a gesture of despair, and 
thrust the gold hair off her temples. 

“Heaven help me, I cannot — I dare not! And — I am 
no longer capable of being just !” 

There was an accent almost of passion in her voice ; she 
felt that so greatly did she desire his deliverance, his jus- 
tification, his return to all which was his own, desired even 
his presence among them in her own world, that she could 
no longer give him calm and unbiased judgment. He heard, 
and the burning tide of a new joy rushed on him, checked 
almost ere it was known, by the dread lest for her sake she 
should ever give him so much pity that such pity became 
love. 

He started to his feet and looked down imploringly into 
her eyes — a look under which her own never quailed or 
drooped, but which they answered with that same regard 
which she had given him when she had declared her faith 
in his innocence. 


598 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“If I thought it possible you could ever care ” 

She moved slightly from him ; her face was very white 
still, and her voice, though serenely sustained, shook as it 
answered him : 

“If I could — believe me, I am not a woman who would, 
bid you forsake your honor to spare yourself or me. Let 
us speak no more of this ! What can it avail, except to 
make you suffer greater things ? Follow the counsels of 
your own conscience. You have been true to them hith- 
erto ; it is not for me, or through me, that you shall ever 
be turned aside from them.” 

A bitter sigh broke from him as he heard. 

“ They are noble words. And yet it is so easy to utter, 
so hard to follow them. If you had one thought of ten- 
derness for me, you could not speak them.” 

A flush passed over her face. 

“Do not think me without feeling — without sympathy 
— pity ” 

“ These are not love.” 

She was silent ; they were, in a sense, nearer to love 
than any emotion she had ever known. 

“ If you loved me,” he pursued, passionately — “ ah, God 1 
the very word from me to you sounds insult ; and yet there 
is not one thought in me that does not honor you — if you 
loved me, could you stand there and bid me drag on this 
life forever, nameless, friendless, hopeless, having all the 
bitterness but none of the torpor of death, wearing out the 
doom of a galley slave, though guiltless of all crime?” 

“Why speak so ? You are unreasoning ; a moment ago 
you implored me not to tempt you to the violation of what 
you hold your honor ; because I bid you be faithful to it, 
you deem me cruel !” 

“ Heaven help me ! I scarce know what I say. I ask you, 
if you were a woman who loved me, could you decide thus ?” 

“ These are wild questions,” she murmured ; “what can 
they serve ? I believe that I should — I am sure that I 
should. As it is — as your friend ” 

“Ah, hush 1 Friendship is crueller than hate.” 

“ Cruel ?” 

“Yes; the worst cruelty when we seek love — a stone 
proffered us when we ask for bread in famine I” 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


599 


There was desperation, almost ferocity, in the answer ; 
she was moved and shaken by it — not to fear, for fear was 
not in her nature, but to something of awe, and something 
of the despairing hopelessness that was in him. 

“Lord Royaliieu,” she said, slowly, as if the familiar 
name were some tie between them, some cause of excuse 
for these, the only love words she had ever heard without 
disdain and rejection — “Lord Royaliieu, it is unworthy of 
you to take this advantage of an interview which I sought, 
and sought for your own sake. You pain me, you wound 
me. I cannot tell how to answer you. You speak 
strangely, and without warrant.” 

He stood mute and motionless before her, his head sunk 
on his chest. He knew that she rebuked him justly; he 
knew that he had broken through every law he had pro- 
scribed himself, and that he had sinned against that code 
of chivalry which should have made her sacred from such 
words while they were those he could not utter, nor she 
hear, except in secrecy and shame. Unless he could stand 
justified in her sight and in that of all men, he had no 
right to seek to wring out tenderness from her regret and 
from her pity. Yet all his heart went out to her in one 
irrepressible entreaty. 

“Forgive me, for pity’s sake I After to-night I shall 
never look upon your face again.” 

“ I do forgive,” she said gently, while her voice grew 
very sweet. “You endure too much already for one need- 
less pang to be added by me. All I wish is, that you had 
never met me, so that this last, worst thing had not come 
unto you !” 

A long silence fell between them ; where she leaned back 
among her cushions, her face was turned from him. He 
stood motionless iti the shadow, his head still dropped 
upon his breast, his breathing loud and slow and hard. To 
speak of love toTier was forbidden to him, yet the insid- 
ious temptation wound closer and closer round his strength. 
He had only to betray the man he had sworn to protect, 
and she would know his innocence, she would hear his pas- 
sion ; he would be free, and she — he grew giddy as the 
thought rose before him — she might, with time, be brought 
to give him other tenderness than that of friendship. He 


.600 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


seemed to touch the very supremacy of joy, to reach it al* 
most with his hand, to have honors, and peace, and all the 
glory of her haughty loveliness, and all the sweetness of 
her subjugation, and all the soft delights of passions before 
him in their golden promise, and he was held back in 
bands of iron, he was driven out from them desolate and 
accurst. 

Unlike Cain, he had suffered in his brother’s stead, yet, 
like Cain, he was branded and could only wander out into 
the darkness and the wilderness. 

She watched him many minutes, he unconscious of her 
gaze ; and while she did so, many conflicting emotions 
passed over the colorless delicacy of her features ; her eyes 
were filled and shadowed with many altering thoughts ; 
her heart was waking from its rest, and the high, gener- 
ous, unselfish nature in her strove with her pride of birth, 
her dignity of habit. 

“Wait,” she said, softly, with the old imperial command 
of her voice subdued, though not wholly banished. “I 
think you have mistaken me somewhat. You wrong me 
if you think that I could be so callous, so indifferent, as to 
leave you here without heed as to your fate. Believe in 
your innocence you know that I do, as firmly as though 
you substantiated it with a thousand proofs; reverence 
your devotion to your honor you are certain that I must, 
or all better things were dead in me.” 

Her voice sank inaudible for the instant ; she recovered 
her self-control with an effort. 

“You reject my friendship — you term it cruel — but at 
least it will be faithful to you ; too faithful for me to pass 
out of Africa and never give you one thought again. / 
believe in you. Do you not know that that is the highest 
trust, to my thinking, that one human life can show in an- 
other’s ? You decide that it is your duty not to free your- 
self from this bondage, not to expose the actual criminal, 
not to take up your rights of birth. I dare not seek to 
alter that decision. But I cannot leave you to such a 
future without infinite pain, and there must — there shall 
be — means through which you will let me hear of you — , 
through which, at least, I can know that you are living.” 

She stretched her hands toward him with that same ges- 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


601 


ture with which she had first declared her faith in his guilt- 
lessness; the tears trembled in her voice and swam in her 
eyes. As she had said, she suffered for him exceedingly. 
He, hearing those words which breathed the only pity that 
had never humiliated him, and the loyal trust which was 
but the truer because the sincerity of faith in lieu of the 
insanity of love dictated it, made a blind, staggering, un- 
conscious movement of passionate dumb agony. He seized 
her hands in his and held them close against his breast one 
instant, against the loud hard panting of his aching heart. 

“God reward you 1 God keep you! If I stay, I shall 
tell you all ; let me go, and forget that we ever met ! I 
am dead — let me be dead to you !” 

With another instant he had left the tent and passed 
out into the red glow of the torchlit evening. And Ve- 
netia Corona dropped her proud head down upou the 
silken cushions where his own had rested, and wept as wo- 
men weep over their dead — in such a passion as had never 
come to her in all the course of her radiant, victorious, and 
imperious life. 

It seemed to her as if she had seen him slain in cold 
blood, and had never lifted her hand or her voice against 
his murder. 

His voice rang in her ear ; his face was before her with 
its white still rigid anguish ; the burning accents of his 
avowal of love seemed to search her very heart. If this 
man perished in any of the thousand perils of war she 
would forever feel herself his assassin. She had his secret, 
she had his soul, she had his honor in her hands ; and she 
could do nothing better for them both than to send him 
from her to eternal silence, to eternal solitude ! 

Her thoughts grew unbearable; she rose impetuously 
from her couch and paced to and fro the narrow confines 
of her tent. Her tranquillity was broken down ; her pride 
was abandoned ; her heart, at length, was reached and 
sorely wounded. The only man she had ever found, whom 
it would have been possible to her to have loved, was one 
already severed from her by a fate almost more hideous 
than death. 

And yet, in her loneliness, the color flushed back into 
51 


602 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


her face ; her eyes gathered some of their old light ; one 
dreaming shapeless fancy floated vaguely through her mind. 

If, in the years to come, she knew him in all ways worthy, 
and learned to give him back this love he bore her, it was 
in her to prove that love at no matter what cost to her 
pride and her lineage. If his perfect innocence were made 
clear in her own sight, there was greatness and there was 
unselfishness enough in her nature to make her capable of 
regarding alone his martyrdom and his heroism, and dis- 
regarding the opinion of the world. If hereafter she grew 
to find his presence the necessity of her life, and his sacri- 
fice of that nobility, and of that purity, she now believed 
it, she — proud as she was with the twin pride of lineage 
and of nature — would be capable of incurring the odium 
and the marvel of all who knew her by uniting her fate to 
his own, by making manifest her honor and her tenderness 
for him, though men saw in him only a soldier of the em- 
pire, only a base-born trooper, beneath her, as Riom be- 
neath the daughter of D’Orleans. She was of a brave 
nature, of a great nature, of a daring courage, and of a 
superb generosity. Abhorring dishonor, full of glory in 
the stainless history of her race, and tenacious of the dig- 
nity and of the magnitude of her House, she yet was too 
courageous and too haughty a woman not to be capable 
of braving calumny if conscious of her own pure rectitude 
beneath it, not to be capable of incurring false censure, if 
encountered in the path of justice and of magnanimity. 
It was possible, even on herself it dawned as possible, that 
so great might become her compassion and her tenderness 
for this man, that she would, in some distant future, when 
the might of his love and the severity of his suffering should 
prevail with her, say to him : 

“ Keep your secret from the world as you will. Prove 
your innocence only to me ; let me and the friend of your 
youth alone know your name and your rights. And know- 
ing all, knowing you myself to be hero aud martyr in one, 
I shall not care w r hat the world thinks of you, what the 
world says of me. I will be your wife : I have lands, and 
riches, and honors, and greatness enough to suffice for 
us both.” 

If ever she loved him exceedingly, she would become ca- 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


603 


pable of this sacrifice from the strength, and the gracious 
ness, and the fearlessness of her nature, and such love was 
not so distant from her as she thought. 

****** 

Outside her tent there was a peculiar mingling of light 
and shadow ; of darkness from the moonless and now cloud- 
covered sky, of reddened warmth from the tall burning 
pine-boughs thrust into the soil in lieu of other illumination. 
The atmosphere was hot from the flames, and chilly with 
the breath of the night winds ; it was oppressively still, 
though from afar off the sounds of laughter in the camp 
still echoed, and near at hand the dull and steady tramp 
of the sentinels fell on the hard parched soil. Into that 
blended heat and cold, dead blackness and burning glare, 
he reeled out from her presence ; drunk with pain as de- 
liriously as men grow drunk with raki. The challenge 
rang on the air : 

“ Who goes there ?” 

He never heard it. Even the old long-accustomed 
habits of a soldier’s obedience were killed in him. 

“ Who goes there ?” the challenge rang again. 

Still he never heard, but went on blindly. From where 
the tents stood, there was a stronger breadth of light 
through which he had passed, and was passing still — a 
light strong enough for it to be seen whence he came, but 
not strong enough so show his features. 

“Halt, or I fire 1” The sentinel brought the weapon to 
his shoulder and took a calm, close, sure aim. He did not 
speak ; the password he had forgotten as though he had 
never heard or never given it. 

Another figure than that of the soldier on guard came 
out of the shadow, and stood between him and the sentinel. 
It was that of Chateauroy ; he was mounted on his gray 
horse and wrapped in his military cloak, about to go the 
round of the cavalry camp. Their eyes met in the waver- 
ing light like the glow from a furnace-mouth : in a glance 
they knew each other. 

“ It is one of my men,” said the chief carelessly to tba 
sentinel. “ Leave me to deal with him.” 

The guard saluted, and resumed his beat. 

“Why did you refuse the word, sir ?” 


604 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ I did not hear.” 

“And why did you not hear?” 

There was no reply. 

“ Why are you absent from your squadron ?” 

There was no reply still. 

“ Have you no tongue, sir ? The matraque shall soon 
make you speak ! Why are you here ?” 

There was again no answer. 

Chateauroy’s teeth ground out a furious oath ; yet a 
flash of brutal delight glittered in his eyes. At last he had 
hounded down this man, so long out of his reach, into dis- 
obedience and contumacy. 

“ Why are you here, and where have you been ?” he de- 
manded once more. 

“ I will not say.” 

The answer, given at length, was tranquil, low, slowly 
and distinctly uttered, in a deliberate refusal, in a deliberate 
defiance. 

The dark and evil countenance above him grew livid 
with fury. 

“ I can have you thrashed like a dog for that answer, 
and I wiil. But first listen here, beau sire! I know as 
well as though you had confessed to me. Your silence 
cannot shelter your great mistress’s shame. Ah-ha ! la 
Faustine ! So Madame votre Prinecsse is so cold to her 
equals, only to choose her lovers out of my blackguards, 
and take her midnight intrigues like a camp courtesan 1” 

Cecil’s face changed terribly as the vile words were 
spoken. With the light and rapid spring of a leopard, he 
reached the side of his commander, one hand on the horse’s 
mane, the other on the wrist of his chief, that it gripped 
like an iron vice. 

“You lie! And you know that you lie. Breathe her 
name once more, and, by God, as we are both living men, 
I will have your life for your outrage !” 

And, as he spoke, with his left hand he smote the lips 
that had blasphemed against her. 

It was broken asunder at last — all the long and bitter 
patience, all the calm and resolute endurance, all the un- 
deviating sereuity beneath provocation, which had never 
yielded through twelve long years, but which had borne 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


605 


with infamy and with tyranny with such absolute submis- 
sion for sake of those around him, who would revolt at his 
sign, and be slaughtered for his cause. The promise he 
had given to endure all things for their sakes — the sakes 
of his soldiery, of his comrades — was at last forgotten. 
All he remembered was the vileness that dared touch her 
name, the shame that through him was breathed on her. 
Rank, duty, bondage, consequence, all were forgotten in 
that one instant of insult that mocked in its odious lie at 
her purity. He was no longer the soldier bound in obe- 
dience to submit to the indignities that his chief chose to 
heap on him ; he was a gentleman who defended a woman’s 
honor, a man who avenged a slur on the life that he loved. 

Chateauroy wrenched his wrist out of the hold that 
crushed it, and drew his pistol. Cecil knew that the laws 
of active service would hold him but justly dealt with if the 
shot laid him dead in that instant for his act and his words. 

“You can kill me — I know it. Well, nse your pre- 
rogative ; it will be the sole good you have ever done to 
me.” 

And he stood erect, patient, motionless, looking into 
his chief’s eyes with a calm disdain, with an unuttered 
challenge that, for the first moment, wrung something of 
savage respect and of sullen admiration out from the soul 
of his great foe. 

He did not fire ; it was the only time in which any trait 
of abstinence from cruelty had been ever seen in him. He 
signed to the soldiers of the guard with one hand, while 
with the other he still covered with his pistol the man 
whom martial law would have allowed him to have shot 
down, or have cut down, at his horse’s feet. 

“Arrest him,” he said, simply. 

Cecil offered no resistance ; he let them seize and dis- 
arm him without an effort at the opposition which could 
have been but a futile, unavailing trial of brute force. He 
dreaded lest there should be one sound that should reach 
her ' in that tent where the triad of standards drooped in 
the dusky distance, lie had been, moreover, too long be-' 
neath the yoke of that despotic and irresponsible authority 
to waste breath or to waste dignity in vain contest with 
:he absolute and the immutable. He was content wUh 
51 * 


606 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


what he had done — content to have met once, not as sol- 
dier to chief, but as man to man, the tyrant who held his 
fate. 

For once, beneath the spur of that foul outrage to the 
dignity and the innocence of the woman he had quitted, 
he had allowed a passionate truth to force its way through 
the barriers of rank and the bonds of subservience. Insult 
to himself he had borne as the base prerogative of his 
superior, but insult to her he had avenged with the ven- 
geance of equal to equal, of the man who loved on the 
man who calumniated her. 

And as he sat in the darkness of the night with the 
heavy tramp of his guards forever on his ear, there wa3 
peace rather than rebellion in his heart — the peace of one 
heartsick with strife and with temptation, who beholds in 
death a merciful ending to the ordeal of existence. “I 
shall die in her cause at least,” he thought. “I could 
be content if I were only sure that she would never 
know.” 

For this was the chief dread which hung on him, that 
she should ever know, and in knowing, suffer for his sake. 

The night rolled on, the army around him knew nothing 
of what had happened. Chateauroy, conscious of his own 
coarse guilt against the guest of his Marshal, kept the 
matter untold and undiscovered, under the plea that ho 
desired not to destroy the harmony of the general re- 
joicing. The one or two field-officers with whom he took 
counsel agreed to the wisdom of letting the night pass 
away undisturbed. The accused was the idol of his own 
squadron : there was no gauge what might not be done by 
troops heated with excitement and drunk with wine, if 
they knew that. their favorite comrade had set the example 
of insubordination, and would be sentenced to suffer for it. 
Beyond these, and the men employed in his arrest and 
guard, none knew what had chanced ; not the soldiery be- 
neath that vast sea of canvas, many of whom would have 
rushed headlong to mutiny and to destruction at his word ; 
bot the woman who in the solitude of her wakeful hours 
was haunted by the memory of his love-words, and felt 
steal on her the unacknowledged sense, that if his future 
were left to misery, happiness could never more touch her 


ORDEAL BY FIRE. 


607 


own ; not the friend of his early days, laughing and drink- 
ing with the officers of the staff. 

None knew; not even Cigarette. She sat alone, so far 
away that none sought her out, beside the picket* fire that 
had long died out, with the little white dog of Zaraila 
curled on the scarlet folds of her skirt. Her arms rested 
on her knees, and her temples were leant on her hands 
tightly twisted among the dark silken curls of her boyish 
hair. Her face had the same dusky savage intensity upon 
it; and she never once moved from that rigid attitude. 

She had the Cross on her heart — the idol of her long de- 
sire, the star to which her longing eyes had looked up ever 
since her childhood through the reek of carnage and the 
smoke of battle: and she would ha^e flung it away like 
dross to have had his lips touch hers once with love. 

“Que je suis folle /” she muttered in her throat, “ queje 
suis folle !” 

And she knew herself mad ; for the desires and the de- 
lights of love die swiftly, but the knowledge of honor 
abides always. Love would have made her youth, sweet 
with au unutterable gladness, to glide from her and leave 
her weary, dissatisfied, forsaken. But that Cross, the ^ift 
of her country, the symbol of her heroism, would be with 
her always, and light her forever with the honor of which 
it was the emblem; and if her life should last until youth 
passed away, and age came, and with age death, her hand 
would wander to it on her dying.bed, and she would smile 
as she died to hear the living watchers murmur: “That 
life had glory — that life was lived for France. ” 

She knew this: but she was young; she was a woman- 
child, she had the ardor of passionate youth in her veins, 
she had the desolation of abandoned youth in her heart. 
And honor looked so cold beside love 1 

She rose impetuously; the night was far spent, the 
camp was very still, the torches had long died out, and 
a streak of dawn was visible in the east. She stood 
awhile looking very earnestly across the wide black city 
of tents. 

“I shall be best away for a time. I grow mad, treach- 
erous, wicked here,” she thought. “I will go and see 
Blanc-Bec.” 


608 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Blanc-Bec was the soldier of the Army of Italy. 

In a brief while she had saddled and bridled Etoile- 
Filante, and ridden out of the camp without warning or 
farewell to any: she was as free to come and to go as 
though she were a bird on the wing. Thus she went, 
knowing nothing of his fate. And with the sunrise went 
also the woman whom he loved — in ignorance. 


CHAPTER XXXVI. 

THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 

The warm transparent light of an African autumnal 
noon shone down through the white canvas roof of a great 
tent in the heart of the encamped divisions at the head- 
quarters of the Army of the South. In the tent there was a 
densely packed throng — an immense, close, hushed, listening 
cr^vd, of which every man wore the uniform of France, of 
which the mute undeviating attention, forbidden by disci- 
pline alike to be broken by sound of approval or dissent, had 
in it something that was almost terrible, contrasted with the 
vivid eagerness in their eyes and the strained absorption 
of their countenances; for they were in court, and that 
court was the Conseil de Guerre of their own southern 
camp. 

The prisoner was arraigned on the heaviest charge that 
can be laid against the soldier of any army, and yet, as 
the many eyes of the military crowd turned on him where 
he stood surrounded by his guard, his crime against his 
chief was forgotten, and they only remembered — Zaraila. 

Many of those present had seen him throughout that 
day of blood, at the head of his decimated squadron, with 
the guidon held aloft above every foe ; to them that tall, 
slender form standing there, with a calm, weary dignity, 
that had nothing of the passion of the mutinous or the 
consciousness of the criminal in its serene repose, had shed 
upon it the luster of a heroism that made them ready al- 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. G09 

most to weep like women that the death of a mutineer 
should be the sole answer given by France to the savior of 
her honor. 

He preserved entire reticence in court. The instant the 
acte d’accusation had been read to him, he had seen that 
his chief would not dare to couple with it the proud, pure 
name he had de.red to outrage ; his most bitter anxiety 
was thus at an end. For all the rest, he was tranquil. 

No case could be clearer, briefer, less complex, more en- 
tirely incapable of defense. The soldiers of the guard 
gave evidence as to the violence and fury of the assault. 
The sentinel bore witness to having heard the refusal to 
reply; a moment after, he had seen the attack made and 
the blow given. The accuser merely stated that, meeting 
his so us-officier out of the 'bounds of the cavalry camp, 
he had asked him wheye he had been, and why he was 
there, and, on his commanding an answer, had been as- 
saulted in the manner described, with violence sufficient to 
have cost his life had not the guard been so near at hand. 
When questioned as to what motive he could assign for 
the act, he replied that he considered his corporal had al- 
ways incited evil feeling and mutinous conduct in the 
squadrons, and had, he believed, that day attributed to 
himself his failure to receive the Cross. The statement 
passed without contradiction by the prisoner, who, to the 
interrogations and entreaties of his legal defenseur, only 
replied that the facts were stated accurately as they oc- 
curred, and that his reasons for the deed he declined to 
assert. 

When once more questioned as to his country and his 
past by the president, he briefly declined to give answer. 
When asked if the names by which he was enrolled were 
his own, he replied that they were two of his baptismal 
names, which had served his purpose on entering the army. 
When asked if he accepted as true the charge of exciting 
sedition among the troops, he replied that it was so little 
true that, over and over again, the men would have muti- 
nied if he had given them a sign, and that he had continually 
induced them to submit to discipline sheerly by force of 
his own example. When interrogated as to the cause of 
the language he had used to his commanding officer, ho 


610 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


said briefly that the language deserved the strongest cen- 
sure as from a soldier to his colonel, but that it was justi- 
fied as he had used it, which was as man to man, though 
he was aware the plea availed nothing in military law, and 
was impermissible for the safety of the service. When it 
was inquired of him if he had not repeatedly inveighed 
against his commanding officer for severity, he briefly de- 
nied it ; no man had ever heard him say a syllable that 
could have been construed into complaint ; at the same 
time, he observed that all the squadrons knew perfectly 
well personal enmity and oppression had been shown him 
by his chief throughout the whole time of his association 
with the regiment. When pressed as to the cause that he 
assigned for this, he gave, in a few comprehensive outlines, 
the story of the capture and the deliverance of the Emir’s 
bride ; this was all that could be elicited from him ; and 
even this was answered only out of deference to the au- 
thority of the court, and from his unwillingness, even now, 
to set a bad example before the men with whom he had 
served so long. When it was finally demanded of him if 
he had aught to urge in his own extenuation, he paused a 
moment, with a gaze under which even the bard eagle 
eyes grew restless, looked across to Chateauroy, and ad- 
dressed his antagonist rather than the president : 

“Only this: that a tyrant, a liar, and a traducer cannot 
wonder if men prefer death to submission beneath insult. 
Bi# I am well aware this is no vindication of my act as a 
soldier, and I have no desire to say words which, whatever 
their truth, might become hereafter dangerous legacies, 
and dangerous precedents to the army.” 

That was all which he answered, and neither his coun- 
sel nor his accusers could extort another syllable from 
him. 

He knew that what he had done was justified to his own 
conscience, but lie did not seek to dispute that it was un- 
justifiable in military law. True, had all been told, it was 
possible enough that his judges would exonerate him 
morally, even if theycondemed him legally; his act would 
be seen blameless as a man’s, even while still punishable as 
a soldier’s ; but to purchase immunity for himself at the cost 
of bringing the fairness of her fame into the coarse babble 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 61 i 

t*f men’s tongues was an alternative, craven and shameful, 
which never even once glanced across his thoughts. 

He had kept faith to a woman whom he had known 
heartless and well-nigh worthless ; it was not to the wo- 
man whom he loved with all the might of an intense pas- 
sion, and whom he knew pure and glorious as the morning 
sun, that he would break his faith now. 

All through the three days that the conseil sat his look 
and his manner never changed : the first was quite calm, 
though very weary ; the latter courteous, but resolute, with 
the unchanged firmness of one who knew his own past ac- 
tion justified ; for the rest, many noticed that, during the 
chief of the long exhausting hours of his examination and 
his trial, his thoughts seemed far away, and he appeared 
to recall them to the present with "difficulty, and with 
nothing of the vivid suspense of an accused, whose life and 
death swung in the judgment-balance. 

In truth, he had no dread as he bad no hope left; he 
knew well enough that by the blow which had vindicated 
her honor he had forfeited his own existence. All he 
wished was that his sentence had been dealt without this 
formula of debate and of delay, which could have issue but 
in one end. There was not one man in court who was 
not more moved than he, more quick to terror and regret 
for his doom. To many among his comrades who had 
learned to love the gentle, silent “ aristocrat, ” who bore 
every hardship so patiently, and humauized them so imper- 
ceptibly by the simple force of an unvaunted example, 
those three days were torture. Wild, brutal brigands, 
whose year was one long razzia of plunder, rapine, and 
slaughter, felt their lips tremble like young girls’ when 
they asked how the issue went for him ; and the blood- 
stained marauders, who thought as little of assassination 
for a hidden pot of gold as butchers of drawing a knife 
across a sheep’s throat, grew still and fear-stricken with a 
great awe when the muttering passed through the camp 
that they would see no more among their rauks that “wo- 
man’s face” which they had beheld so often foremost in 
the fight, with a look on it that thrilled their hearts like 
their forbidden chant of the Marseillaise. For when tho 
third day closed, they knew that he must die. 


612 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


There were men, hard as steel, ravenous of blood as vul- 
tures, who, when they heard that sentence given, choked 
great deep sobs down into the cavernous depths of their 
broad seared sinewy breasts ; but he never gave sigh or 
sign. He never moved once while the decree of death was 
read to him ; and there was no change in the weary calm- 
ness of his eyes. He bent his head in acquiescence. 

“C’est bien !” he said, simply. 

It seemed well to him : dead, his secret would lie in the 
grave with him, and the long martyrdom of his life be 
ended. 

* * * * * * * 

In the brightness of the noon Cigarette leaned out of 
her little oval casement that framed her head like an old 
black oak carving — a head with the mellow bloom on its 
cheeks, and the flash of scarlet above its dark curls, and 
the robin-like grace of poise and balance as it hung out 
there in the sun. 

Cigarette had been there a whole hour in thought ; she ! 
who never had wasted a moment in meditation or reverie, 
and who found the long African day all too short for her 
busy, abundant, joyous life, that was always full of haste 
and work, just as a bird’s will seem so, though the bird 
have no more to do than to fly at its will through summer 
air, and feed at its will from brook and from berry, from a 
ripe ear of the corn or from a deep cup of the lily. For 
the first time she was letting time drift away in the fruit- 
less labor of vain purposeless thought, because, for the 
first time also, happiness was not with her. 

They were gone forever — all the elastic joyaunce, all 
the free fair hours, all the dauntless gayety of childhood, 
all the sweet harmonious laughter of a heart without a 
care. They were gone forever ; for the touch of love and 
of pain had been laid on her ; and never again would her 
radiant eyes smile cloudlessly like the young eagle’s at a 
sun that rose but to be greeted as only youth can greet 
another dawn of life that is without a shadow. 

And she leaned wearily there with her cheek lying on 
the cold gray Moorish stone ; the color and the brightness 
were in the rays of the light, in the rich hues of her hair 
and her mouth, in the scarlet glow of her dress : thero 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 613 

was no brightness in her face. The eyes were vacant as 
they watched the green lizard glide over the wall beyond, 
and the lips were parted with a look of unspeakable fatigue ; 
the tire, not of the limbs, but of the heart. She had come 
thither hoping to leave behind her on the desert wind that 
alien care, that new strange passion, which sapped her 
strength, and stung her pride, and made her evil with such 
murderous lust of vengeance ; and they were with her still. 
Only something of the deadly biting ferocity of jealousy 
had changed into a passionate longing to be as that woman 
was who had his love; into a certain hopeless sickening 
sense of having forever lost that which alone could have 
given her such beauty and such honor in the sight of men 
as those this woman had. 

To her it seemed impossible that this patrician who had 
his passion should not return it. To the child of the camp, 
though she often mocked at caste, all the inexorable rules, 
all the reticent instincts of caste, were things unknown. 
She would have thought love could have bridged over any 
gulf ; she would have failed to comprehend all the thou- 
sand reasons which would have forbidden any bond be- 
tween the great aristocrat and a man of low grade and of 
dubious name. She only thought of love as she had always 
seen it, quickly born, hotly cherished, wildly indulged, and 
without tie or restraint. 

“ And I came without my vengeance 1” she mused. To 
the nature that felt the ferocity of the vendetta a right and 
a due, there was wounding humiliation in her knowledge 
that she had left her rival unharmed, and had come hither, 
out from his sight and his presence, lest he should see in 
her one glimpse of that folly which she would have killed 
herself under her own steel rather than have been betrayed 
either for his contempt or his compassion. 

“And I came without my vengeance 1” she mused : in 
that oppressive noon, in that gray and lonely place, in that 
lofty tower-solitude, where there was nothing between her 
and the hot, hard, cruel blue of the heavens, vengeance 
looked the only thing that was left her, the only means 
whereby that void in her heart could be filled, that shame 
in her life be washed out. To love ! and to love a man 
who had no love for her, whose eyes only beheld another’s 

52 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


OH 

face, whose ears only thirsted for another’s voice ! Its 
degradation stamped her a traitress in her own sight — 
traitress to her code, to her pride, to her country, to her 
flag ! 

And yet at the core of her heart so tired a pang was 
aching 1 She who had gloried in being the child of the 
whole people, the daughter of the whole army, felt lonely 
and abandoned, as though she were some bird which an 
hour ago had been flying in all its joy among its brethren, 
and now, maimed with one shot, had fallen with broken 
pinion and torn plumage to lie alone upon the sand and die. 

The touch of a bird’s wing brushing her hair brought 
the dreamy comparison to her wandering thoughts. She 
started and lifted her head ; it was a blue carrier-pigeon, 
one of the many she fed at that casement, and the swiftest 
and surest of several she sent with messages for the sol- 
diers between the various stations and corps. She had 
forgotten she had left the bird at the encampment. 

She caressed it absently, while the tired creature sank 
down on her bosom ; then only she saw that there was a 
letter beneath one wing. She unloosed it, and looked at it 
without being able to tell its meaning ; she could not read 
a word, printed or written. Military habits were too strong 
with her for the arrival not to change her reverie into ac- 
tion ; whoever it was for, it must be seen. She gave the 
pigeon water and grain, then wound her way down the 
dark, narrow stairs, through the height of the tower, out 
into the passage below. 

She found an old French cobbler sitting at a stall in a 
casement stitching leather ; he was her customary reader 
and scribe in this quarter. She touched him with the 
paper. “Bon Mathieu ! wilt thou read this to me ?” 

“ It is for thee, Little One, and signed ‘ Petit Pot-de- 
terre.’” 

Cigarette nodded listlessly. 

“’Tis a good lad, and a scholar,” she answered, absently. 
“Read on 1” 

And he read, aloud : 

“There is ill news. I send the bird on a chance to find 

thee. Bel-a-faire-peur struck the Black Hawk a light 

blow, but with threat to kill following it. He has been 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 615 

tried, and is to be shot. There is no appeal to the Con- 
seil de Revision. The case is clear ; the Colonel could 
have cut him down, were that all. I thought you should 
know. We are all sorry. It was done on the night of the 
great fete. I am thy humble lover and slave.” 

So the boy- Zouave’s scrawl, crushed, and blotted, and 
written with great difficulty, ran in its brief phrases that 
the slow muttering of the old shoemaker drew out in te- 
dious length. 

Cigarette heard ; she never made a movement or gave a 
sound, but all the blood fled out of her brilliant face, leav- 
ing it horribly blanched beneath its brown shn-scorch ; and 
her eyes, distended, senseless, sightless, were fastened on 
the old man’s slowly moving mouth. 

“ Read it again !” she said, simply, when all was ended. 
He started, and looked up at her face : the voice had not 
one accent of its own tones left. 

He obeyed, and read it once more to the end. Then a 
loud shuddering sigh escaped her, like the breath of one 
stifling under flames. 

“ Shot !” she said, vacantly. “ Shot !” 

Her vengeance had come without her once lifting her 
hand to summon it. 

The old man rose hurriedly. 

“ Child ! art thou ill ?” 

“ The blow was struck for her!” she muttered. “It was 
that night, you hear — -that night ?” 

“ What night ? Thou lookest so strangely ! Dost thou 
love this doomed soldier ?” 

Cigarette laughed — a laugh whose echo thrilled horri- 
bly through the lonely Moresco courtway. 

“ Love ? love ? I hated him, look you ! So I said. 
And I longed for my vengeance. It is come !” 

She was still a moment ; her white, parched mouth quiv- 
ering as though she were under physical torture, her 
strained eyes fastened on the empty air, the veins in her 
throat swelling and throbbing till they glowed to purple. 
Then she crushed the letter in one hand, and flew, fleet as 
any antelope, through the streets of the Moorish quarter, 
and across the city to the quay. 

The people ever gave way before her; but now they 


61G 


TJNDER TWO FLAGS. 


scattered like frightened sheep from her path. There was 
something that terrified them in that bloodless horror set 
upon her face, and in that fury of resistless speed with 
which she rushed upon her way. 

Once only in her headlong career through the throngs 
she paused ; it was as one face, on which the strong light 
of the noontide poured, came before her. The senseless 
look changed in her eyes ; she wheeled out of her route, 
and stopped before the man who had thus arrested her. 
He was leaning idly over the stall of a Turkish bazaar, 
and her hand grasped his arm before he saw her. 

“You have nis face?” she muttered. “What are you 
to him ?” 

He made no answer ; he was too amazed. 

“You are of his race,” she persisted. “ You are breth- 
ren by your look. What are you to him ?” 

“To whom ?” 

“ To the man who calls himself Louis Victor ? a Chas- 
seur of my army ?” 

Her eyes were fastened entirely on him ; keen, ruthless, 
fierce, in this moment, as a hawk’s. He grew pale, and 
murmured an incoherent denial. He sought to shake her 
off, first gently, then more rudely; he called her mad, and 
tried to fling her from him ; but the lithe fingers only 
wound themselves closer on his arm. 

“Be still — fool !” she muttered; and there was that in 
the accent that lent a strange force and dignity in that 
moment to the careless and mischievous plaything of the 
soldiery — force that overcame him, dignity that overawed 
him. “You are of his people; you have his eyes, and his 
look, and his features. He disowns you, or you him. No 
matter which. He is of your blood ; and he lies under 
sentence of death, do you know that?” 

With a stifled cry, the other recoiled from her ; he never 
doubted that she spoke the truth, none could who had 
looked upon her face. 

“ Do not lie to me, 9 she said curtly. “ It avails you 
nothing. Read that.” 

She thrust before him the paper the pigeon had brought ; 
his hand trembled sorely as he held it : he believed in that 
moment that this strange creature, half soldier, half woman, 


THE VENGEANCE OP THE LITTLE ONE, GH 

half brigand, half child, knew all his story and all his shame 
from his brother : 

“ Shot I” he echoed hoarsely, as she had done, when he 
had read on to the end. “ Shot I O my God ! and 

I ” 

She drew him out of the thoroughfare into a dark re- 
cess within the bazaar, he submitted unresistingly ; he was 
filled with the horror, the remorse, the overwhelming shock 
of his brother’s doom. 

“ He will be shot,” she said with a strange calmness. 
“We shoot down many men in our army. I know him 
well. He was justified in his act, I do not doubt; but 
discipline will not stay for that ” 

“ Silence, for mercy’s sake ! Is there no hope — no pos- 
sibility ?” 

Her lips were parched like the desert sand as her dry 
hard words came through them. “ None. His chief 
could have cut him down on the instant. It took place 
in camp. You feel this thing; you are of his race, then?” 

“ I am his brother 1” 

She was silent ; looking at him fixedly, it did not seem 
to her strange that she should thus have met one of his 
blood in the crowds of Algiers. She was absorbed in the 
one catastrophe whose hideousness seemed to eat her very 
life away, even while her nerve, and her brain, and her 
courage remained at their keenest and strongest. 

“ You are his brother,” she said slowly, so much as an 
affirmation that his belief was conGrmed that she had 
learned both their relationship and their history from 
tJecil. “ You must go to him, then.” 

He shook from head to foot. 

“ Yes, yes ! But it will be too late 1” 

She did not know that the words were cried out in all 
the contrition of an unavailing remorse ; she gave them 
only their literal significance, and shuddered as she 
answered him : 

“ That you must risk. You must go to him. But, first, 
I must know more. Tell me his name, his rank.” 

He was silent : coward and egotist though he was, both 
cowardice and egotism were killed in him under the over- 
whelming horror with which he felt himself as truly by 
52 * 


618 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


moral guilt a fratricide as though he had stabbed his elder 
through the heart. 

Speak l” hissed Cigarette through her clinched teeth. 
<4 If you have any kindness, any pity, any love for the man 
of your blood, who will be shot there like a dog, do not 
waste a second — answer me, tell me all.” 

He turned his wild terrified glance upon her : he had 
in that moment no sense but to seize some means of re- 
paration, to declare his brother’s rights, to cry out to the 
very stones of the streets his own wrong and his victim’s 
sacrifice. 

“ lie is the head of my house 1” he answered her, scarce 
knowing what he answered. “lie should bear the tide 
that I bear now. He is here, in this misery, because lie is 
the most merciful, the most generous, the most long-suf- 
fering of living souls I If he die, it is not they who have 
killed him ; it is I !” 

She listened, with her face set in that stern, fixed, re- 
solute command which never varied : she neglected all 
that wonder, or curiosity, or interest would have made her 
as at any other time, she only heeded the few great facts 
that bore upon the fate of the condemned. 

“ Settle with yourself for that sin,” she said bitterly. 
“Your remorse will not save him. But do the thing that 
I bid you, if that remorse be sincere. Write me out here 
that title you say he should bear, and your statement that 
he is your brother, and should be the chief of your house ; 
then sign it, and give it to me.” 

He seized her hands, and gazed with imploring eyes 
into her face. 

“ Who are you ? What are you ? If you have the 
power to do it, for the love of God rescue him 1 It is I 
who have murdered him — I — who have let him live on in 
this hell for my sake !” 

“ For your sake !” 

She flung his hands off her and looked him full in the 
face ; that glance of the speechless scorn, the unutterable 
rebuke of the woman-child who would herself have died a 
thousand deaths rather than have purchased a whole ex- 
istence by a single falsehood or a single cowardice, smote 
him like a blow, and avenged his sin more absolutely than 


THE VENGEANCE OP THE LITTLE ONE, 


619 


any public chastisement. The courge and the truth of a 
girl scorned his timorous fear and his living lie. His head 
sank, he seemed to shrink under her gaze; his act had 
never looked so vile to him as it looked now. 

She gazed a moment longer at him with her mute and 
wondering disdain that there should be on earth a male 
life capable of such fear aud of such ignominy as these. 
Then the strong and rapid power in her took its instant 
ascendancy over the weaker nature. 

“Monsieur, I do not know your story; I do not want. 
I am not used to men who let others suffer for them. 
What I want is your written statement of your brother’s 
name and station; give it me.” 

He made a gesture of consent ; he would have signed 
away his soul, if he could, in the stupor of remorse which 
had seized him. She brought him pens and paper from 
the Turk’s store, and dictated what he wrote : 

U 1 hereby affirm that the person serving in the Chas- 
seurs d'Afrique under the name of Louis Victor is my 
elder brother, Bertie Cecil , lawfully, by inheritance , the 
Viscount Royallieu , Peer of England. I hereby also 
acknowledge that 1 have succeeded to and borne the title 
illegally, under the supposition of his death. 

“(Signed) Berkeley Cecil.” 

He wrote it mechanically, the force of her will and the 
torture of his own conscience driving him, on an impulse, 
to undo in an instant the whole web of falsehood that he 
had let circumstance weave on and on to shelter him 
through twelve long years. He let her draw the paper 
from him and fold it away in her belt. He watched her 
with a curious dreamy sense of his own impotence against 
the fierce and fiery torrent of her bidding. 

“What is it you will do ?” he asked her. 

“ The best that shall lie in my power ; do you the same.” 

“ Can his life yet be saved ?” 

“ His honor may — his honor shall.” 

Her face had an exceeding beauty as she spoke ; 
though it was stern and rigid still, a look that was sublime 
gleamed over it. She, the waif and stray of a dissolute 


620 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


camp, knew better than the scion of his own race how the 
doomed man would choose the vindication of his honor be- 
fore the rescue of his life. He laid his hand on her as she 
moved : 

“ Stay ! — stay ! One word ” 

She flung him off her again : 

“This is no time for words. Go to him — coward / — 
and let the balls that kill him reach you too, if you have 
one trait of manhood left in you !” 

Then, swiftly as a swallow darts, she quitted him and 
flew on her headlong way, down through the pressure of 
the people, and the throngs of the marts, and the noise, 
and the color, and the movement of the streets. 

The sun was scarce declined from its noon before she 
rode out of the city, on a half-bred horse of the Spahis, 
swift as the antelope and as wild, with her only equipment 
some pistols in her holsters, and a bag of rice and a skin 
of water slung at her saddle-bow. 

They asked her where she went; she never answered. 
The hoofs struck sharp echoes out of the rugged stones, 
and the people were scattered like chaff as she went at full 
gallop down through Algiers. Her comrades, used to see 
her ever with some song in the air and some laugh on the 
lips as she went, looked after her with wonder as she 
passed them, silent, and with her face white and stern as 
though the bright brown loveliness of it had been changed 
to alabaster. 

“ What is it with the Cigarette ?” they asked each 
other. None could tell; the desert horse and his rider 
flew by them as a swallow flies. The gleam of her Cross 
and the colorless calm of the childlike face that wore the 
resolve of a Napoleon’s on it, were the last they ever saw 
of Cigarette. 

All her fluent untiring speech was gone — gone with the 
rose hue from her cheek, with the laugh from her mouth, 
with the child’s joyaunce from her heart ; but the brave, 
stanch, dauntless spirit lived with a soldier’s courage, with 
a martyr’s patience. 

And she rode straight through the scorch of the mid- 
day sun, along the sea-coast westward. The dizzy swiftness 
would have blinded most who should have been carried 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 62J 

through the dry air and under the burning skies at that 
breathless and pauseless speed ; but she had ridden half- 
maddened colts with the skill of Arabs themselves; she 
had been tossed on a holster from her earliest years, and 
had clung with an infant’s hands in fearless glee to the 
mane of rough-riders’ chargers. She never swerved, she 
never sickened ; she was borne on and on against the hard 
hot currents of the cleft air with only one sense — that she 
went so slowly, so slowly, when with every beat of the 
ringing hoofs one of the few moments of a doomed life fled 
away ! 

She had a long route before her; she had many leagues 
to travel, and there were but four and twenty hours, she 
knew well, left to the man who was condemned to death. 
Four and twenty hours left open for appeal — no more — 
betwixt the delivery and execution of the sentence. That 
delay was always interpreted by the French Code as a de- 
lay extending from the evening of one day to the dawn of 
the second day following ; and some slight interval might 
then ensue, according as the general in command ordained. 
But the twenty-four hours was all of which she could be 
certain ; and even of them some must have flown by since 
the carrier-pigeon had been loosed to her. She could not 
tell how long he had to live. 

There were fifty miles between her and her goal ; Abd-cl- 
Kader’s horse had once covered that space in three hours, 
so men of the Army of D’Anraale had told her: she knew 
what they had done she could do. Once only she paused, 
to let her horse lie a brief while, and cool his foam-flaked 
sides, and crop some short sweet grass that grew where a 
cleft of water ran and made the bare earth green. She 
sat quite motionless while he rested ; she was keenly alive 
to all that could best save his strength and further her 
travel ; but she watched him during those few minutes of 
rest and inaction with a fearful look of hunger in her eyes 
— the worst hunger — that which craves Time and cannot 
seize it fast enough. Then she mounted again, and again 
went on, on her flight. 

She swept by cantonments, villages, soldiers on the 
march, douairs of peaceful Arabs, strings of mules and 
camels, caravans of merchandise : nothing arrested her ; 


622 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


she saw nothing that she passed, as she rode over the hard 
dust-covered shadowless roads, over the weary sun-scorched 
monotonous country, over the laud without verdure and 
without foliage, the land that yet has so weird a beauty, 
so irresistible a fascination ; the land to which men, know- 
ing that death waits for them in it, yet return with so mad 
an infatuation as her lovers went back across the waters 
to Circe. 

The horse was reeking with smoke and foam, and the 
blood was coursing from his flanks, as she reached her 
destination at last, and threw herself off his saddle as he 
sank faint and quivering to the ground. Whither she had 
come was to a fortress where the Marshal of France, who 
was the Viceroy of Africa, had arrived that day in his 
progress of inspection throughout the provinces. Soldiers 
clustered round her eagerly beneath the gates, and over 
the fallen beast, a thousand questions pouring from their 
curious tongues. She pointed to the animal with one 
hand, to the gaunt pile of stone that bristled with cannon 
with the other. 

“ Have a care of him ; and lead me to the chief 

She spoke quietly ; but a certain sensation of awe and 
fear moved those who heard. She was not the Child of 
the Army whom they knew so well. She was a creature, 
desperate, hard pressed, mute as death, strong as steel ; 
above all, hunted by despair. 

They hesitated to take her message, to do her bidding. 
The one whom she sought was great and supreme here as 
a king; they dreaded to approach his staff, to ask his 
audience. 

Cigarette looked at them a moment, then loosened her 
Cross and held it out to an adjutant standing beneath the 
gates. 

•‘Take that to the man who gave it me. Tell him 
Cigarette waits ; and with each moment that she waits a 
soldier’s life is lost. Go 1” 

The adjutant took it, and went. Over and over again 
she bad brought intelligence of an Arab movement, news 
of a contemplated razzia, warning of an internal revolt, 
or tidings of an encounter on the plains, that had been of 
priceless value to the army which she served. It was not 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 623 

lightly that Cigarette’s words were ever received when she 
spoke as she spoke now; nor was it impossible that she 
now brought to them that which would brook neither delay 
nor trifling. 

She waited patiently; all the iron discipline of military 
life had never bound her gay and lawless spirit down, but 
now she was singularly still and mute. Only there gleamed 
thirstily in her eyes that fearful avarice which begrudges 
every moment in its flight as never the miser grudged his 
hoarded gold into the robber’s grasp. 

A few minutes and the decoration was brought back to 
her, and her demand granted. She was summoned to tho 
Marshal’s presence. She was taken within the casemat6 
of the fortress. It was the ordnance-room, a long vast 
silent chamber filled with stands of arms, with all the arts 
and appliances of war brought to their uttermost perfec- 
tion, and massed in all the resource of a great empire 
against the sons of the desert, who had nothing to oppose 
to them save the despair of a perishing nationality aud a 
stifled freedom. 

The Marshal, leaning against a brass field-piece, turned 
to her with a smile in his keen stern eyes. 

“ You, my young decoree! What brings you here ?” 

She came up to him with her rapid leopard-like grace, 
and he started as he saw the change upon her features. 
She was covered with sand and dust, and with the animal’s 
blood-flecked foam. The beating of her heart from the 
fury of the gallop had drained every hue from her face ; 
her voice was scarcely articulate in its breathless haste as 
she saluted him : 

“ Monseigneur, I have come from Algiers since 
noon ” 

“ From Algiers 1” He and his officers echoed the name 
of the city in incredulous amaze ; they knew how far from 
them down along the sea-line the white town lay. 

“ Since noon, to rescue a life — the life of a great soldier, 
of a guiltless man. He who saved the honor of France at 
Zaraila is to die the death of a mutineer at dawn 1” 

“ What ! — your Chasseur ?” 

A dusky scarlet fire burned through the pallor of her 
face ; but her eyes never quailed, and the torrent of her 


624 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


eloquence returned under the pangs of shame that were 
beaten back under the noble instincts of her love. 

“ Mine ! — since he is a soldier of France ; yours too by 
that title. I am come here, from Algiers, to speak the 
truth in his name, and to save him for his own honor and 
the honor of my Empire. See here I At noon, I have 
this paper, sent by a swift pigeon — read it ! You see how 
he is to die, and why. Well, by my Cross, by my Flag, 
by my France, I swear that not a hair of his head shall be 
touched, not a drop of blood in his veins shall be shed !” 

He looked at her, astonished at the grandeur and the 
courage which could come on this child of razzias and 
revelries, and give to her all the splendor of a fearless 
command of some young empress. But his face darkened 
and set sternly as he read the paper ; it was the greatest 
crime in the sight of a proud soldier, this crime against 
discipline, of the man for whom she pleaded. 

“ You speak madly,” he said, with cold brevity. “ The 
offense merits the chastisement. I shall not attempt to 
interfere.” 

“Wait ! you will hear, at least, Monseigneur?” 

“ I will hear you — yes ; but I tell you, once for all, I 
never change sentences that are pronounced by conseils 
de guerre ; and this crime is the last for which you should 
attempt to plead for mercy with me.” 

“ Hear me, at least 1” she cried, with passionate ferocity 
— the ferocity of a dumb animal wounded by a shot. “ You 
do not know what this man is — how he has had to endure ; 
I do. I have watched him ; I have seen the brutal tyranny 
of his chief, who hated him because the soldiers loved him. 
1 have seen his patience, his obedience, his long-suffering 
beneath insults that would have driven any other to re- 
volt and murder. I have seen him — I have told you how 
— at Zaraila, thinking never of death or of life, only of 
our Flag, that he has made his own, and under which he 
has been forced to lead the life of a galley-slave ” 

“ The liner soldier he be, the less pardonable his of- 
fense.” 

“ That I deny I If he were a dolt, a brute, a thing of 
wood, as many are, he would have no right to vengeance ; 
as it is, he is a gentleman, a hero, a martyr j may he not 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 


625 


forget for one hour that he is a slave ? Look you 1 I 
have seen him so tried, that I told him — I, who love my 
army better than any living thing under the sun — that 
I would forgive him if he forgot duty and dealt with his 
tyrant as man to man. And he always held his soul in 
patience. Why ? Not because he feared death — he de- 
sired it ; but because he loved his comrades, aud suffered 
in peace and in silence lest, through him, they should be 
led into evil ” 

His eyes softened as he heard her ; but the inflexibility 
of his voice never altered. 

“It is useless to argue with me,” he said, briefly; “I 
never change a sentence.” 

“But I say that you shall!” As the audacious words 
were flung forth, she looked him full in the eyes, while her 
voice rang with its old imperious oratory. “ You are a 
great chief ; you are as a monarch here ; you hold the 
gifts and the grandeur of the Empire ; but, because of that 
— because you are a?, France in my eyes — I swear, by the 
name of France, that you shall see justice done to him; 
after death, if you cannot in life. Do you know who he is 
. — this man whom his comrades will shoot down at sunrise 
as they shoot down the murderer and the ravisher in their 
crimes ?” 

“He is a rebellious soldier; it is sufficient.” 

“He is not ! He is a man who vindicated a woman’s 
honor; he is a man who suffers in a brother’s place; he is 
an aristocrat exiled to a martyrdom ; he is a hero who has 
never been greater than he will be great in his last hour. 
Bead that ! What you refuse to justice, and mercy, and 
courage, and guiltlessness, you will grant, maybe, to your 
Order.” 

She forced into his hand the written statement of Cecil’s 
name and station. All the hot blood was back in her cheek, 
all the fiery passion back in her eyes. She lashed this 
potent ruler with the scourge of her scorn as she had 
lashed a drunken horde of plunderers with her whip. She 
was reckless of what she said ; she was conscious only of 
one thing — the despair that consumed her. 

The French Marshal glanced his eye on the fragment, 
2 p 53 


626 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


carelessly and coldly. As be saw the words, he started, and 
read on with wondering eagerness. 

“Royallieu 1” he muttered; — “ Royallieu 1” 

The name was familiar to him; he it was who, when he 
had murmured, “ That man has the seat of the English 
Guards,” as a Chasseur d’Afrique had passed him, had 
been ignorant that in that Chasseur he saw one whom he 
had known in many a scene of Court splendor and Parisian 
pleasure. The years had been many since Cecil and he 
had*met, but not so many but that the name brought mem- 
ories of friendship with it, and moved him with a strange 
emotion. 

He turned with grave anxiety to Cigarette. 

“You speak strangely; how came this in your hands?” 

“Thus: the day that you gave me the Cross, I saw 
Madame la Princesse Corona. I hated her, and I went — 
no matter 1 From her I learned that he whom we call 
Louis Victor was of her rank, was of old friendship with 
her house, was exiled and nameless, but for some reason 
unknown to her. She needed to see him ; to bid him fare- 
well, so she said. I took the message for her; I sent him 
to her.” Her voice grew husky and savage, but she forced 
her words on with the reckless sacrifice of self that moved 
her. “He went to her tent, alone, at night; that was, of 
course, whence he came when Ch&teauroy met him. I 
doubt not the Black Hawk had some foul thing to hint of 
his visit, and that the blow was struck for her — for her ! 
Well ; in the streets of Algiers I saw a man with a face 
like his own ; different, but the same race, look you. I- 
spoke to him ; I taxed him. When he found that the one 
whom I spoke of was under sentence of death, he grew 
mad ; he cried out that he was his brother, and had mur- 
dered him — that it was for his sake that the cruelty of this 
exile had been borne — that if his brother perished, he 
would be his destroyer. Then I bade him write down that 
paper, since these English names were unknown to me, and 
I brought it hither to you that you .might see under his 
hand and with your own eyes that I have uttered the 
truth. And now is that man to be killed like a mad beast 
whom you fear ? Is that death the reward France will 
give for Zaraila?” 


THE VENGEANCE 0 ? THE LITTLE ONE. 627 

Her eyes were fixed with a fearful intensity of appeal 
upon the stern face bent over her; her last arrow was 
sped ; if this failed, all was over. As he heard, he was 
visibly moved ; he remembered the felon’s shame that in 
years gone by had fallen across the banished name of Bertie 
Cecil ; the history seemed clear as crystal to him seen be- 
neath the light shed on it from other days. 

His hand fell heavily on the gun-carriage. 

“ Mort de Dieu! it was his brother’s sin, not his 1” 

There was a long silence ; those present, who knew 
nothing of all that was in his memory, felt instinctively 
that some dead weight of alien guilt was lifted off a blame- 
less life forever. 

She drew a deep, long, sighing breath ; she knew that 
he was safe. Her hands unconsciously locked on the great 
chief’s arms ; her eyes looked up, senselessly in their rap- 
ture and their dread, to his. 

“Quick, quick 1” she gasped. “The hours go so fast; 
while we speak here he ” 

The words died in her throat. The Marshal swung 
around with a rapid sign to a staff officer. 

“Pens and ink I instantly I My brave child, what can 
we say to you ? I will send an aid to. arrest the execu- 
tion of the sentence. It must be deferred till we know the 
whole truth of this; if it be as it looks now, he shall be 
saved if the Empire can save him 1” 

She looked up in his eyes with a look that froze his very 
heart. 

“His honor I” she muttered ; “ his honor — if not his life !” 

He understood her; he bowed his haughty head low 
down to hers. 

“True. We will cleanse that, if all other justice be too 
late.” 

The answer was infinitely gentle, infinitely solemn. Then 
he turned and wrote his hurried order, and bade his aid 
go with it without a second’s loss; but Cigarette caught it 
from his hand. 

“ To me 1 to me ! No other will go so fast !” 

“But, my child, you are worn out already.” 

She turned on him her beautiful wild eyes, in wbich the 
blinding passionate tears were floating. 


62S 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“Do yon think I would tarry for that f Ah ! I wish 
that I had let them tell me of God, that I might ask Him 
now to bless you 1 Quick, quick I Lend me your swiftest 
horse, one that will not tire. Aud send a second order by 
your aid-de-camp ; the Arabs may kill me as I go, and then 
they will not know 1” 

He stooped and touched her little brown, scorched, fe- 
verish hand with reverence. 

“ My child, Africa has shown me much heroism, but none 
like yours. If you fall, he shall be safe, and France will 
know how to avenge its darling’s loss.” 

She turned and gave him one look, infinitely sweet, infi- 
nitely eloquent. 

“Ah, France !” she said, so softly that the last word was 
but a sigh of unutterable tenderness. The old imperish- 
able early love was not dethroned; it was there still before 
all else. France was without rival with her. 

Then, without another second’s pause, she flew from 
them, and vaulting into the saddle of a young horse which 
stood without in the court-yard, rode once more, at full 
speed, out into the pitiless blaze of the sun, out to the 
wasted desolation of the plains. 

The order of release, indeed, was in her bosom ; but the 
chances were as a million to one that she would reach him 
with it in time, ere with the rising of the sun his life would 
have set forever. 

All the horror of remorse was on her; to her nature the 
bitter jealousy in which she had desired vengeance on him 
seemed to have rendered her a murderess. She loved him 
— loved him with an exceeding passion ; and only in this 
extremity, when it was confronted with the imminence of 
death, did the fullness and the greatness of that love make 
their way out of the petulant pride and the wounded vanity 
which had obscured them. She had been ere now a child 
and a hero; beneath this blow which struck at him she 
changed — she became a woman and a martyr. 

And she rode at full speed through the night, as she 
had done through the daylight, her eyes glancing all around 
in the keen instinct of a trooper, her hand always on the 
butt of her belt pistol. For she knew well what the dan- 
ger was of these lonely, unguarded, untraveled leagues 


THE VENGEANCE OP TIIE LITTLE ONE. 629 

chat yawned in so vast a distance between her and her 
goal. The Arabs, beaten, but only rendered furious by 
defeat, swept down onto those plains with the old guerrilla 
skill, the old marvelous rapidity. She knew that with 
every second shoj; or steel might send her reeling from her 
saddle, that with every moment she might be surrounded 
by some desperate band who would spare neither her sex 
nor her youth. But that intoxication of peril, the wine- 
draught she had drunk from her infancy, was all which 
sustained her in that race with death. It Oiled her veins 
with their old heat, her heart with its old daring, her 
nerves with their old matchless courage : but for it she 
would have dropped, heart-sick with terror and despair, ere 
her errand could be done; under it she had the coolness, 
the keenness, the sagacity, the sustained force, and the 
supernatural strength of some young hunted animal. They 
might slay her so that she left perforce her mission unac- 
complished ; but no dread of such a fate had even an in- 
stant’s power to appall her or arrest her. While there 
should be breath in her, she would go on to the end. 

There were eight hours’ hard riding before her, at the 
swiftest pace her horse could make ; and she was already 
worn by the leagues already traversed. Although this was 
nothing new that she did now, yet as time flew on and she 
flew with it, ceaselessly, through the dim solitary barren 
moonlit land, her brain now and then grew giddy, her 
heart now and then stood still with a sudden numbing 
faintness. She shook the weakness off her with the reso- 
lute scorn for it of her nature, and succeeded in its banish- 
ment. They had put in her hand as she had passed 
through the fortress gates a lance with a lantern muffled 
in Arab fashion, so that the light was unseen from before, 
while it streamed over her herself, to enable her to gnido 
her way if the moon should be veiled by clouds. With 
that single starry gleam aslant on a level with her eyes, 
she rode through the ghastly twilight of the half-lit plains, 
now flooded with luster as the moon emerged, now engulfed 
in darkness as the stormy western winds drove the cirri 
over it. But neither darkness nor light differed to her ; 
she noted neither; she was like one drunk with strong 
wine, and she had but one dread — that the nower of her 

53 * 


630 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


horse wordd give way under the unnatural strain made on 
it, and that she would reach too late, when the life she 
went to save would have fallen forever, silent unto death, 
as she had seen the life of Marquise fall. 

Hour on hour, league on league, passed away ; she felt 
the animal quiver under the spur, and she heard the catch 
in his panting breath as he strained to give his fleetest and 
best, that told her how, ere long, the racing speed, the ex- 
pended gallop at which she kept him, would tell, and beat 
him down despite his desert strain. She had no pity ; she 
would have killed twenty horses under her to reach her 
goal. She was giving her own life, she was willing to 
lose it, if by its loss she did this thing, to save even the 
man condemned to die with the rising of the sun. She did 
not spare herself ; and she would have spared no living 
thing, to fulfill the mission that she undertook. She loved 
with the passionate blindness of her sex, with the absolute 
abandonment of the southern blood. If to spare him she 
must have bidden thousands fall, she would have given the 
word for their destruction without a moment’s pause. 

Once from some screen of gaunt and barren rock a shot 
was fired at her, and flew within a hair’s breadth of her 
brain; she never even looked around to see whence it had 
come ; she knew it was from some Arab prowler of the 
plains. Her single spark of light through the half- veiled 
lantern passed as swiftly as a shooting-star across the pla- 
teau. And as she felt the hours steal on — so fast, so hid- 
eously fast — with that horrible relentlessness, “ohne hast, 
ohne rast,” which tarries for no despair, as it hastens for 
no desire, her lips grew dry as dust, her tongue clove to 
the roof of her mouth, the blood beat like a thousand 
hammers on her brain. 

What she dreaded came. 

Midway in her course, when, by the stars, she knew 
midnight was passed, the animal strained with hard-drawn 
panting gasps to answer the demand made on him by the 
' spur arid by the lance-shaft with which he was goaded onward. 
In the lantern-light she saw his head stretched out in the 
racing agony, his distended eyeballs, his neck covered with 
foam and blood, his heaving Hanks that seem bursting with 
every throb that his heart gave; she knew that, half a 


THE VENGEANCE OF THE LITTLE ONE. 631 

league more forced from him, he would drop like a dead 
thing never to rise again. She let the bridle drop upon 
the poor beast’s neck, and threw her arms above her head 
with a shrill wailing cry, whose despair echoed over the 
noiseless plains like the cry of a shot-stricken animal. She 
saw it all : the breathing of the rosy golden day ; the still- 
ness of the hushed camp ; the tread of the few picked men ; 
the open coffin by the open grave ; the leveled carbines 

gleaming in the first rays of the sun She had seen 

it so many times — seen it, to the awful end, when the living 
man fell down in the morning light a shattered, senseless, 
soulless, crushed-out mass. 

That single moment was all the soldier’s nature in her 
gave to the abandonment of despair, to the paralysis that 
seized her. With that one cry from the depths of her 
breaking heart, the weakness spent itself : she knew that ac- 
tion alone could aid him. She looked across, southward 
and northward, east and west, to see if there were aught 
near from which she could get aid. If there were none, 
the horse must drop down to die, and with his life the 
other life would perish as surely as the sun would rise. 

Her gaze, straining through the darkness, broken here and 
there by fitful gleams of moonlight, caught sight in the dis- 
tance of some yet darker thing, moving rapidly — a large 
cloud skimming the earth. She let the horse, which had 
paused the instant the bridle had touched his ueck, stand 
still awhile, and kept her eyes fixed on the advancing cloud 
till, with the marvelous surety of her desert-trained vision, 
she disentangled it from the floating mists and wavering 
shadows, and recognized it, as it was, a band of Arabs. 

If she turned eastward out of her route, the failing 
strength of her horse would be fully enough to take her 
into safety from their pursuit, or even from their perception, 
for they were coming straightly and swiftly across tho 
plain. If she were seen by them, she was certain of her 
fate ; they could only be the desperate remnant of the deci- 
mated tribes, the foraging raiders of starving and des- 
perate men, hunted from refuge to refuge, and carrying 
fire and sword in their vengeance wherever au unprotected 
caravan or a defenseless settlement gave them the power 
of plunder and of slaughter, that spared neither age nor 


632 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


sex. She was known throughout the length and the 
breadth of the land to the Arabs : she was neither child 
nor woman to them ; she was but the soldier who had 
brought up the French reserve at Zaraila ; she was but the 
foe who had seen them defeated, and ridden down with her 
comrades in their pursuit in twice a score of vanquished, 
bitter, intolerably shameful days. Some among them had 
sworn by their^God to put her to a fearful death if ever 
they made her captive, for they held her in superstitious 
awe, and thought the spell of the Frankish successes would 
be broken if she were slain. She knew that ; yet, knowing 
it, she looked at their advancing band one moment, then 
turned her horse’s head and rode straight toward them. 

“ They will kill me, but that may save him,” she thought. 
“Any other way he is lost.” 

So she rode directly toward them : rode so that she 
crossed their front, and placed herself in their path, stand- 
ing quite still, with the cloth torn from the lantern, so that 
its light fell full about her, as she held it above her head. 
In an instant they knew her. They were the remnant who 
had escaped from the carnage of Zaraila ; they knew her 
with all the rapid unerring surety of hate. They gave the 
shrill wild war-shout of their tribe, and the whole mass of 
gaunt, dark, mounted figures with their weapons whirling 
round their heads inclosed her; a cloud of kites settled 
down with their black wings and cruel beaks upon one 
young silvery-plumed gerfalcon. 

She sat unmoved, and looked up at the naked blades 
that flashed above her : there was no fear upon her face, 
only a calm resolute proud beauty, very pale, very still in 
the light that gleamed on it from the lantern rays. 

“I surrender,” she said briefly: she had never thought 
to say these words of submission to her scorned foes ; she 
would not have been brought to utter them to spare her 
own existence. Their answer was a yell of furious delight, 
and their bare blades smote each other with a clash of 
brutal joy: they had her, the Frankish child who had 
brought shame and destruction on them at Zaraila, and 
they longed to draw their steel across the fair young 
throat, to plunge their lances into the bright bare bosom, 
to twine her hair round their spear handles, to rend her 


THE VENGEANCE OP THE LITTLE ONE. 


C3;i 


delicate limbs apart, as a tiger rends the antelope, to tor- 
ture, to outrage, to wreak their vengeance on her. Their 
chief, only, motioned their violence back from her, and 
bade them leave her untouched. At him she looked, still 
with the same fixed, serene, scornful resolve : she had en- 
countered these men so often in battle, she knew so well 
how rich a prize she was to him. But she had one thought 
alone with her; and for it she subdued contempt, and hate, 
and pride and every passion in her. 

“ I surrender,” she said, with the same tranquillity. “ I 
have heard that you have sworn by your God and your 
Prophet to tear me limb from limb because that I — a child, 
and a woman-child — brought you to shame and to grief on 
the day of Zaraila. Well, I am here ; do it. You can 
slake your will on me. But that you are brave men, and 
that I have ever met you in fair fight, let me speak one 
word with you first.” 

Through the menaces and the rage around her, fierce as 
the yelling of starving wolves around a frozen corpse, her 
clear brave tones reached the ear of the chief in the lingua- 
sabir that she used. He was a young man, and his ear 
was caught by that tuneful voice, his eyes by that youthful 
face. He signed upward the swords of his followers, and 
motioned them back as their arms were stretched to seize 
her, and their shouts clamored for her slaughter. 

11 Speak on,” he said, briefly to her. 

“ You have sworn to take my body, sawn in two, to 
Ben-Ihreddin ?” she pursued, naming the Arab leader 
whom her Spahis had driven off the field of Zaraila. “ Well, 
here it is ; you can take it to him ; and you will receive 
the piasters, and the horse, and the arms that he has 
promised to whosoever shall slay me. I have surrendered; 
I am yours. But you are bold men, and the bold are never 
mean ; therefore I will ask one thing of you. There is a 
man yonder, in my camp, condemned to death with the 
dawn. He is innocent. I have ridden from Algiers to- 
day with the order of his release. If it is not there by 
sunrise he will be shot ; and he is guiltless as a child un- 
born. My horse is worn out; he could not go another 
half league. I knew that, since he had failed, my comrade 
would -perish, unless I found a fresh beast or a messenger 


634 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


to go in my stead. I saw vour band come across the plain. 
I knew that you would kill me, because of your oath and 
of your Emir’s bride; but I thought that you would have 
greatness enough in you to save this man who is con- 
demned, without crime, and who must perish unless you, 
his foes, have pity on him. Therefore I came. Take the 
paper that frees him ; send your fleetest and surest with it, 
under a flag of truce, into our camp by the dawn ; let him 
tell them there that I, Cigarette, gave it him — he must say 
no word of what you have done to me, or his white flag 
will not protect him from the vengeance of my army — and 
then receive your reward from your chief, Ben-Ihreddin, 
when you lay my head down for his horse’s hoofs to trample 
into the dust. Answer me — is the compact fair? Ride 
on with this paper northward, and then kill me with what 
torments you choose.” 

She spoke with calm unwavering resolve, meaning that 
which she uttered to its very uttermost letter. She knew 
that these men had thirsted for her blood; she olfered it 
to be shed to gain for him that messenger on whose speed 
his life was hanging; she knew that a price was set upon 
her head, but she delivered herself over to the hands of 
her enemies so that thereby she might purchase his re- 
demption. 

As they heard, silence fell upon the brutal clamorous herd 
around — the silence of amaze and of respect. The young 
chief listened gravely ; by the glistening of his keen black 
eyes, he was surprised and moved, though, true to his 
teaching, he showed neither emotion as he answered her : 

“ Who is this Frank for whom you do this thing ?” 

“ He is the warrior to whom you offered life on the field 
of Zaraila because his courage was as the courage of gods.” 

She knew the qualities of the desert character; knew 
how to appeal to its reverence and to its chivalry. 

“And for what does he perish ?” he asked. 

“ Because he forgot for once that he was a slave; and 
because he has borne the burden of a guilt that was not 
bis own.” 

They were quite still now, closed around her ; these 
ferocious plunderers, who had been thirsty a moment be- 
fore to sheathe their weapons in her body, were spell* 


TIIE VENGEANCE OP THE LITTLE ONE. 635 

bound by the sympathy of courageous souls, by some 
vague perception that there was a greatness in this little 
tigress of France, whom they had sworn to hunt down 
and slaughter, which surpassed all they had known or 
dreamed. 

“And you have given yourself up to us that by your 
death you may purchase a messenger from us for this 
errand ?” pursued their leader. He had been reared as a 
boy in the high tenets and the pure chivalries of the school 
of Abd-el-Kader ; and they were not lost in him despite 
the crimes and the desperation of his life. 

She held the paper out to him with a passionate entreaty 
breaking through the enforced calm of despair with which 
she had hitherto spoken. 

“ Cut me in ten thousand pieces with your swords, but 
save him, as you are brave men, as you are generous 
foes 1” 

With a single sign of his hand, their leader waved them 
back where they crowded around her, and leaped down 
from his saddle, and led the horse he had dismounted to her. 

“ Maiden,” he said, gently, “ we are Arabs, but we are 
not brutes. We swore to avenge ourselves on an enemy ; 
we are not vile enough to accept a martyrdom. Take my 
horse — he is the swiftest of my troop — and go you on your 
errand; you are safe from me.” 

She looked at him in stupor ; the sense of his words was 
not tangible to her; she had had no hope, no thought, that 
they would ever deal thus with her ; all she had ever 
dreamed of was so to touch their hearts and their gen- 
erosity that they would spare one from among their troop 
to do the errand of mercy she had begged of them. 

“ You play with me !” she murmured, while her lips 
grew whiter and her great eyes larger in the intensity of 
her emotion. “Ah 1 for pity’s sake, make haste and kill 
me, so that this only may reach him!” 

The chief, standing by her, lifted her up in his sinewy 
arms, up on to the saddle of his charger. His voice was 
very solemn, his glance was very gentle ; all the nobility 
of the highest Arab nature was aroused in him at the 
heroism of a child, a girl, an infidel — one, in his sight 
abandoned and shameful among her sex. 


636 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“ Go in peace,” he said, simply ; “ it is not with such as 
thee that we war.” 

Then, and then only, as she felt the fresh reins placed 
in her hand, and saw the ruthless horde around her fall 
back and leave her free, did she understand his meaning, 
did she comprehend that he gave her back both liberty and 
life, and, with the surrender of the horse he loved, the 
noblest and most precious gift that the Arab ever bestows 
or ever receives. The unutterable joy seemed to blind her, 
and gleam upon her face like the blazing light of noon, as 
rhe turned her burning eyes full on him. 

“Ah ! now I believe that thine Allah rules thee, equally 
with Christians 1 If I live, thou shalt see me back ere 
another night ; if I die, France will know how to thank 
thee 1” 

“ We do not do the thing that is right for the sake that 
men may recompense us,” he answered her, gently. “ Fly 
to thy friend, and hereafter do not judge that those who 
are in arms against thee must needs be as the brutes that 
seek out whom they shall devour.” 

Then, with one word in his own tongue, he bade the 
horse bear her southward, and, as swiftly as a spear 
lanched from his hand, the animal obeyed him and flew 
across the plains. He looked after her awhile, through 
the dim tremu?ous darkness that seemed cleft by the rush 
of the gallop as the clouds are cleft by lightning, while his 
tribe sat silent on their horses in moody unwilling consent, 
savage in that they had been deprived of prey, moved in 
that they were sensible of this martyrdom which had been 
offered to them. 

“ Verily the courage of a woman has put the best among 
us unto shame,” he said, rather to himself than them, as 
he mounted the stallion brought him from the rear and 
rode slowly northward, unconscious that the thing he had 
done was great, because conscious only that it was just. 

And, borne by the fleetness of the desert-bred beast, she 
went away through the heavy bronze-hued dullness of the 
night. Her brain had no sense, her hands had no feeling, 
her eyes had no sight ; the rushing as of waters was loud 
on her ears, the giddiness of fasting and of fatigue sent the 
gloom eddying round and round like a whirlpool of shadow, 


IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY. 


637 


Yet she had remembrance enough left to ride on, and on, 
and on without once flinching from the agonies that racked 
her cramped limbs and throbbed in her beating temples ; 
she had remembrance enough to strain her blind eyes to- 
ward the east and murmur, in her terror of that white 
dawn, that must soon break, the only prayer that had 
been ever uttered by the lips no mother’s kiss had ever 
touched : 

“ 0 God! keep the day back!' 1 


CHAPTER XXXVII. 

IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY. 

There was a line of light in the eastern sky. The camp 
was very still. It was the hour for the mounting of tho 
guard, and, as the light spread higher and higher, whiter 
and whiter, as the morning came, a score of men advanced 
slowly and in silence to a broad strip of land screened from 
the great encampment by the rise and fall of the ground, 
and stretching far and even, with only here and there a 
single palm to break its surface, over which the immense 
arc of the sky bent, gray and serene, with only the one 
colorless gleam eastward that was changing imperceptibly 
into the warm red flush of opening day. 

Sunrise "Sind solitude: they were alike chosen lest the 
army that honored, the comrades that loved him should 
rise to his rescue, casting off the yoke of discipline, and re- 
membering only that tyranny and that wretchedness under 
which they had seen him patient and unmoved throughout 
so many years of servitude. 

He stood tranquil beside the coffin within which his 
broken limbs and shot-pierced corpse would so .soon be 
laid forever. There was a deep sadness on his face, but 
it was perfectly serene. To the words of the priest who 
approached him he listened with respect, though he gently 
decliued the services of the Church. He had spoken but 

54 


C38 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


very little since his arrest ; he was led out of the camp in 
silence, and waited in silence now, looking across the plains 
to where the dawn was growing richer and brighter with 
every moment that the numbered seconds of his life drifted 
slowly and surely away. 

When they came near to bind the covering over his eyes, 
he motioned them away, taking the bandage from their 
hands and casting it far from him. 

“ Did I ever fear to look down the depths of my ene- 
mies’ muskets ?” 

It was the single outbreak, the single reproach, that 
escaped from him — the single utterance by which he ever 
quoted his services to France. Not one who heard him 
dared again force on him that indignity which would have 
blinded his sight, as though he had ever dreaded to meet 
death. 

That one protest having escaped from him, he was once 
more still and calm, as though the vacant grave yawning 
at his feet had been but a couch of down to rest his tired 
limbs. His eyes watched the daylight deepen, and widen, 
and grow into one sheet of glowing roseate warmth ; but 
there was no regret in the gaze ; there was a fixed fathom- 
less resignation that moved with a vague sense of awe 
those who had come to slay him, and who had been so 
used to slaughter that they fired their volley into their 
comrade’s breast as callously as into the ranks of their an- 
tagonists. 

“ It is best thus,” he thought, “ if only she never 
knows ” 

Over the slope of brown and barren earth that screened 
the camp from view there came, at the very moment that 
the ramrods were drawn out with a shrill, sharp ring from 
the carbine-barrels, a single figure, tall, stalwart, lithe, with 
the spring of the deerstalker in its rapid step, and the 
sinew of the northern races in its mould. 

Cecil never saw it ; he was looking at the east, at the 
deepening of the morning flush that was the signal of his 
slaughter, and his head was turned away. 

The new-comer went straight to the adjutant in com- 
mand, and addressed him with brief preface, hurriedly aud 
low. 


IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY. 


639 


“Your prisoner is Victor of the Chasseurs? — he is to 
be shot this morning?” 

The officer assented ; he suffered the interruption, recog- 
nizing the rank of the speaker. 

“I heard of it yesterday; I rode all night from Oran. 
I feel great pity for this man, though he is unknown to 
me,” the stranger pursued, in rapid whispered words. 
“ His crime was ?” 

“A blow to his colonel, monseigneur.” 

“And there is no possibility of a reprieve ?” 

“None.” 

“May I speak with him an instant? I have heard it 
thought that he is of my country, and of a rank above his 
standing in his regiment here.” 

“ You may address him, M. lo Due ; but be brief. Time 
presses.” 

He thanked the officer for the unusual permission, and 
turned to approach the prisoner. At that moment Cecil 
turned also, and their eyes met. A great shuddering cry 
broke from them both ; his head sank as though the bul- 
lets had already pierced his breast, and the man who 
believed him dead stood gazing at him, paralyzed with 
horror. 

For a moment there was an awful silence ; then the 
Seraph’s voice rang out with a terror in it that thrilled 
through the careless, callous hearts of the watching sol- 
diery. 

“Who is that man ? He died — he died so long ago I 
And yet ” 

Cecil’s head was sunk on his chest; he never spoke, he 
never moved ; he knew the helpless, hopeless misery that 
waited for the one who found him living only to lind him 
also standing beside his open grave. He saw nothing; he 
only felt the crushing force of his friend’s arms flung round 
him, as though seizing him to learn whether he were a living 
man or a specter dreamed of in delirium. 

“ Who are you ? Answer me for pity’s sake !” 

As the swift, hoarse, incredulous words poured on his 
ear, he, not seeking to unloose the other’s hold, lifted his 
head and looked full in the eyes that had not met his own 
for twelve long years. In that one look all was uttered ; 


340 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


the strained, eager, doubting eyes that read their answer 
in it needed no other. 

“You live still ! Oh! thank God — thank God !” 

And as the thanksgiving escaped him, he forgot all save 
the breathless joy of this resurrection ; forgot that at their 
feet the yawning grave was open and unfilled. Then, and 
only then, under that recognition of the friendship that 
had never failed and never doubted, the courage of the 
condemned gave way, and his limbs shook with a great 
shiver of intolerable torture : and at the look that came 
upon his face, the look of dumb, brute-like anguish, the 
man who loved him remembered all — remembered that he 
stood there in the morning light only to be shot down like 
a beast of prey. Holding him there still with that strong 
pressure of his sinewy hands, he swore a great oath that 
rolled like thunder down the hard, keen air. 

“ You l perishing here ! If they send their shots through 
you, they shall reach me first in their passage ! O heaven ! 
Why have you lived like this? Why have you been lost 
to me, if you were dead to all the world beside ?” 

They were the words that his sister had spoken ; Cecil’s 
white lips quivered as he heard them ; his voice was 
scarcely audible as it panted through them. 

“ I was accused— — ” 

“Ay ! But by whom ? Not by me. Never by me !” 

Cecil’s eyes tilled with slow blinding tears; tears sweet 
as a woman’s in her joy, bitter as a man’s in his agony. 
He knew that in this one heart at least no base suspicion 
ever had harbored ; he knew that this love, at least, had 
cleaved to him through all shame and against all evil. 

“God reward you,” he murmured. “You have never 
doubted ?” 

“Doubted ? Was your honor not as my own?” 

“ I can die at peace then ; you know me guiltless ” 

“ Great God ! Death shall not touch you. As I stand 
here not a hair of your head shall be harmed ” 

“ Hush 1 Justice must take its course. One thing only 
— has she heard ?” 

“Nothing. She has left Africa. But you can be saved ; 
you shall be saved ; they do not know what they do 1” 

“Yes! They but follow the sentence of the law. Do 
not regret it. It is best thus.” 


IN THE MIDST OP HER ARMY. 


641 


“Best ! — that you should be slaughtered in cold blood l” 
his voice was hoarse with the horror which, despite his 
words, possessed him. He knew what the demands of dis- 
cipline exacted, he knew what the inexorable tyranny of 
the army enforced, he knew that he had found the life lost 
to him for so long only to stand by and see it struck down 
like a shot stag’s. 

Cecil’s eyes looked at him with a regard in which all the 
sacrifice, all the patience, all the martyrdom of his life spoke. 

“ Best, because a lie I could never speak to you, and 
the truth I can never tell to you. Do not let her know ; 
it might give her pain. I have loved her; that is useless, 
like all the rest. Give me your hand once more, and then 
— let them do their duty. Turn your head away ; it will 
aoon be over !” 

Almost ere he asked it, his friend’s hands closed upon 
both his own, keeping the promise made so long before in 
the old years gone: great tearless sobs heaved the depths 
of his broad chest ; those gentle weary words had rent his 
very soul, and he knew that he was powerless here ; he 
knew that he could no more stay this doom of death than 
he could stay the rising of the sun up over the eastern 
heavens. The clear voice of the officer in command rang 
6hrilly through the stillness. 

“ Monseigneur, make your farewell. I can wait no 
longer.” 

The Seraph started, and flung himself round with the 
grand challenge of a lion, struck by a puny spear; his face 
flushed crimson ; his words were choked in his throbbing 
throat. 

“As I live, you shall not fire ! I forbid you ! I swear 
by my honor and the honor of England that he shall not 
die like a dog. He is of my country; he is of my order. 
I will appeal to your Emperor ; he will accord me his life 
the instant I ask it. Give me only an hour’s reprieve — a 
few moments’ space to speak to your chiefs, to seek out 
your general ” 

“ It is impossible, monseigneur.” 

The curt, calm answer was inflexible : against the sen- 
tence and its execution there could be no appeal. 

Cecil laid his hand upon his old friend’s shoulders. 

2 Q 54* 


642 


TJNDER TWO FLAGS. 


“It will bo useless,” he murmured. “Let them act; 
the quicker the better.” 

“ What ! you think I can look on, and see you die ?” 

Would to Heaven you had never known I lived ” 

The officer made a gesture to the guard to separate 
them. 

“Monsieur, submit to the executiou of the law, or 1 
must arrest you.” 

Lyonnesse flung off the detaining hand of the guard, and 
swung round so that his agonized eyes gazed close into 
the adjutant’s immovable face, which before that gaze lost 
its coldness and its rigor, and changed to a great pity for 
this stranger who had found the friend of his youth in the 
man who stood condemned to perish there. 

“An hour’s reprieve ; for mercy’s sake, grant that 1” 

“ I have said, it is impossible.” 

“ But you do not dream who is ” 

“ It matters not.” 

“ He is an English noble, I tell you ” 

“ He is a soldier who has broken the law ; that suffices.” 

“ O Heaven ! have you no humanity ?” 

“ We have justice.” 

“Justice ! If you have justice, let your chiefs hear his 
story ; let his name be made known ; give me an hour’s 
space to plead for him. Your Emperor would grant me 

his life, were he here ; yield me an hour — a half hour 

anything that will give me time to serve him ” 

“ It is out of the question ; I must obey my orders. I 
regret you should have this pain ; but if you do not cease 
to interfere, my soldiers must make you.” 

Where the guards held him, Cecil saw and heard. His 
voice rose with all its old strength and sweetness : 

“ My friend, do not plead for me. For the sake of our 
common country and our old love, let us both meet this 
with silence and with courage.” 

“ You are a madman 1” cried the man, whose heart felt 
breaking under this doom he could neither avert nor share. 

“ You think that they shall kill you before my eyes ? you 

think I shall stand by to see you murdered ? What crime 
have you done? None, I dare swear, save being moved, 
under insult, to act as the men of your race ever acted ! 


IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY. 


643 


All, God! why have lived as you have done? why not have 
trusted my faith and my love ? If you had believed in my 
faith as I believed in your innocence, this misery never 
had come to us !” 

“ Hush ! hush ! or you will make me die like a coward.” 

He dreaded lest he should do so ; this ordeal was greater 
than his power to bear it. With the mere sound of this 
man’s voice a longing, so intense in its despairing desire, 
came on him for this life which they were about to kill in 
him forever. 

The words stung his hearer well-nigh to madness ; he 
turned on the soldiers with all the fury of his race that 
slumbered so long, but when it awoke was like the lion’s 
rage. Invective, entreaty, conjuration, command, im- 
ploring prayer, and ungoverned passion poured in tumult- 
uous words, in agonized eloquence, from his lips: all an- 
swer was a quick sign of the hand ; and, ere he saw them, 
a dozen soldiers were round him, his arms were seized, his 
splendid frame was held as powerless as a lassoed bull ; for 
a moment there was a horrible struggle, then a score of 
ruthless hands locked him in as in iron gyves, and forced 
his mouth to silence and his eyes to blindness ; this was all 
the mercy they could give, — to spare him the sight of his 
friend’s slaughter. 

Cecil’s eyes strained on him with one last longing look, 
then he raised his hand and gave the signal for his own 
death-shot. 

The leveled carbines covered him ; he stood erect with 
his face full toward the sun; ere they could fire, a shrill 
cry pierced the air : 

“ Wait ! in the name of France.” 

Dismounted, breathless, staggering, with her arms flung 
upward, and her face bloodless with fear, Cigarette ap- 
peared upon the ridge of rising ground. 

The cry of command peeled out upon the silence in the 
voice that the Army of Africa loved as the voice of their 
Little One. And the cry came too late ; the volley was 
fired, the crash of sound thrilled across the words that 
bade them pause, the heavy smoke rolled out upon the air, 
the death that was doomed was dealt. 

But beyond the smoke-cloud he staggered slightly, and 


644 


UNDER TWO FLAG 3. 


then stood erect still, almost unharmed, grazed only by 
some few of the balls. The flash of fire was not so fleet 
as/the swiftness of her love; and on his breast she threw 
herself, and flung her arms about him, and turned her head 
backward with her old dauntless sunlit smile as the balls 
pierced her bosom, and broke her limbs, and were turned 
away by that shield of warm young life from him. 

Her arms were gliding from about his neck, and her 
shot limbs were sinking to the earth as he caught her up 
where she dropped to his feet. 

“O God 1 my child ! they have killed you !” 

He suffered more, as the cry broke from him, than if the 
bullets had brought him that death which he saw at one 
glance had stricken down forever all the glory of her child- 
hood, all the gladness of her youth. 

She laughed — all the clear, imperious, arch laughter of 
her sunniest hours unchanged. 

“ Chut! It is the powder and ball of France ! that does 
not hurt. If it was an Arbico’s bullet now ! But wait ! 
Here is the Marshal’s order. He suspends your sentence ; 
I have told him all. You are safe ! — do you hear*? — you 
are safe ! How he looks ! Is he grieved to live ? Mes 
Frangais! tell him clearer than I can tell — here is the 
order. The General must have it. Ho — not out of my 
hand till the General sees it. Fetch him, some of you — 
fetch him to me.” 

“ Great Heaven ! you have given your life for mine !” 

The words broke from him in an agony as he held her 
upward against his heart, himself so blind, so stunned, with 
the sudden recall from death to life, and with the sacrifice 
whereby life was thus brought to him, that he could scarce 
see her face, scarce hear her voice, but only dimly, incredu- 
lously, terribly knew, in some vague sense, that she was 
dying, and dying thus for him. 

She smiled up in his eyes, while even in that moment, 
whan her life was broken down like a wounded bird’s, and 
the shots had pierced through from her shoulder to her 
bosom, a hot scarlet flush came over her cheeks as she felt 
his touch and rested on his heart. 

“ A life ! Tiens! what is it to give ? We hold it in our 
hands every hour, we soldiers, and toss it in change for a 


IN THE MIDST OF IIER ARMY. 


645 


draught of wine. Lay me down on the ground — at your 
feet — so ! I shall live longest that way, and I have much 
to tell. How they crowd around me 1 Mes soldats, do 
not make that grief and that rage over me. They are 
sorry they fired ; that is foolish. They were only doing 
their duty, and they could not hear me in time.” 

But the brave words could not console those who had 
killed the Child of the Tricolor ; they flung their carbines 
away, they beat their breasts, they cursed themselves and 
the mother who had borne them ; the silent, rigid, motion- 
less phalanx that had stood there in the dawn to see death 
dealt in the inexorable penalty of the law was broken up 
into a tumultuous, breathless, heart- stricken, infuriated 
throng, maddened with remorse, convulsed with sorrow, 
turning wild eyes of hate on him as on the cause through 
which their darling had been stricken. He, laying her 
down with unspeakable gentleness as she had bidden him, 
hung over her, leaning her head against his arm, and 
watching in paralyzed horror the helplessness of the quiver- 
ing limbs, the slow flowing of the blood beneath the Cross 
that shone where that young heroic heart so soon would 
beat no more. 

“ Oh, my child, my child !” he moaned, as the full might 
and meaning of this devotion which had saved him at such 
cost rushed on him. “ What am I worth that you should 
perish for me ? Better a thousand times have left me to 
my fate 1 Such nobility, such sacrifice, such love I” 

The hot color flushed her face once more; she was strong 
to the last to conceal that passion for which she was still 
content to perish in her youth. 

“ Chut I We are comrades, and you are a brave man. 
I would do the same for any of my Spahis. Look you, I 
never heard of your arrest till I heard too of your sen- 
tence ” 

. She paused a moment, and her features grew white and 
quivered with pain and with the oppression that seemed 
to lie like lead upon her chest. But she forced herself to 
be stronger than the anguish which assailed her strength; 
and she motioned them all to be silent as she spoke on 
while her voice still should serve her. 

11 They will tell you how I did it — I have not time. The 


C46 


UNI>ER TWO FLAGS. 


Marshal gave his word you shall be saved ; there is no 
fear. That is your friend who bends over me here ? — is it 
not ? A fair face, a brave face ! You will go back to your 
land — you will live among your own people — and she, she 
will love you now — now she knows you are of her Order !” 

Something of the old thrill of jealous dread and hate 
quivered through the words, but the purer, nobler nature 
vanquished it ; she smiled up in his eyes, heedless of the 
tumult round them. 

“ You will be happy. That is well. Look you — it is 
nothing that I did. I would have done it for any one o! 
my soldiers. And for this ” — she touched the blood flow- 
ing from her side with the old, bright, brave smile — “it 
was an accident ; they must^not grieve for it. My men 
are good to me ; they will feel such regret and remorse ; 
but do not let them. I am glad to die.” 

The words were unwavering and heroic, but for one 
moment a convulsion went over her face ; the young life 
was so strong in her, the young spirit was so joyous in her, 
existence was so new, so fresh, so bright, so dauntless a 
thing to Cigarette. She loved life : the darkness, the lone- 
liness, the annihilation of death were horrible to her as the 
blackness and the solitude of night to a young child. 
Death, like night, can be welcome only to the weary, and 
she was weary of nothing on the earth that bore her buoyant 
steps; the suns, the winds, the delights of the sights, the 
joys of the senses, the music of her own laughter, the mere 
pleasure of the air upon her cheeks, or of the blue sky above 
her head, were all so sweet to her. Her welcome of her 
death-shot was the only untruth that had ever soiled her 
fearless lips. Death was terrible ; yet she was content — 
content to have come to it for his sake. 

There was a ghastly stricken silence round her. The 
order she had brought had just been glanced at, but no 
other thought was with the most callous there than thp 
heroism of her act, than the martyrdom of her death. 

The color was fast passing from her lips, and a mortal 
pallor settling there in the stead of that rich bright hue, 
once warm as the scarlet heart of the pomegranate. Her 
head leant back on Cecil’s breast, and she felt the great 
burning tears fall one by one upon her brow as he hung 


IN THE MIDST OP HER ARMY. 64T 

ppeechless over her: she put her hand upward and touched 
his eyes softly : 

“Chut! What is it to die — just to die? You have lived 
your martyrdom ; I could not have done that. Listen, just 
one moment. You will be rich. Take care of the old 
man — he will not trouble long — and of Vole-qui-veut and 
Etoile, and Boule Blanche, and the rat, and all the dogs, 
will you ? They will show you the Chateau de Cigarette 
in Algiers. I should not like to think that they would 
starve. ,, 

She felt his lips move with the promise he could not find 
voice to utter ; and she thanked him with that old child- 
like smile that had lost nothing of its light: 

“ That is good ; they will be happy with you. And see 
here; — that Arab must have back his white horse: he 
alone saved you. Have heed that they spare him. And 
make my grave somewhere where my army passes ; where 
I can hear the trumpets, and the arms, and the passage of 
the troops — 0 God ! I forgot ! I shall not wake when 
the bugles sound. It will all end now, will it not? That 
is horrible, horrible l” 

A shudder shook her as, for the moment, the full sense 
that all her glowing, redundant, sunlit, passionate life was 
crushed otit forever from its place upon the earth forced 
itself on and overwhelmed her. But she was of too brave 
a mould to suffer any foe — even the foe that conquers 
kings — to have power to appall her. She raised herself, 
and looked at the soldiery around her, among them the 
men whose carbines had killed her, whose anguish was like 
the heart-rending anguish of women. 

“Mes Fran 9 ais! That was a foolish word of mine. 
How many of my bravest have fallen in death ; and shall 
1 be afraid of what they welcomed ? I)o not grieve like 
that. You could not help it; you were doing your duty. 
If the shots had not come to me, they would have gone to 
him ; and he has been unhappy so long, and borne wrong 
so patiently, he has earned the right to live and enjoy. 
Now I — I have been happy all my days, like a bird, like 
a kitten, like a foal, just from being young and taking no 
thought. I should have had to suffer if I had lived ; it is> 
much best as it is ” 


648 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


Her voice failed her when she had spoken the heroic 
words; loss of blood was fast draining all strength from 
her, and she quivered in a torture she could not wholly con- 
ceal : he for whom she perished hung over her in an agony 
greater far than hers ; it seemed a hideous dream to him 
that this child lay dying in his stead. 

“Can nothing save her?” he cried, aloud. “O God! 
that you had fired one moment sooner 1” 

She heard ; and looked up at him with a look in which 
all the passionate, hopeless, imperishable love she had 
resisted and concealed so long spoke with an intensity she 
never dreamed. 

“She is content,” she whispered softly. “You did not 
understand her rightly; that was all.” 

“All! O God, how I have wronged you!” 

The full strength, and nobility, and devotion of this 
passion he had disbelieved in and neglected rushed on him 
as he met her eyes ; for the first time he saw her as she 
was, for the first time he saw all of which the splendid 
heroism of this untrained nature would have been capable 
under a different fate. And it struck him suddenly, 
heavily, as with a blow; it filled him with a passion of re- 
morse. 

“ My darling ! — my darling ! what have I dhne to be 
worthy of such love?” he murmured, while the tears fell 
from his blinded eyes, and his head drooped until his lips 
met hers. At the first utterance of that word between 
them, at the unconscious tenderness of his kisses that had 
the anguish of a farewell in them, the color suddenly flushed 
all over her blanched face ; she trembled in his arms ; and 
a great shivering sigh ran through her. It came too late, 
this warmth of love. She learned what its sweetness might 
have been only when her lips grew numb, and her eyes 
sightless, and her heart without pulse, and her senses with- 
out consciousness. 

“Hush!” she answered, with a look that pierced his 
soul. “ Keep those kisses for Miladi. She will have the 
right to love you ; she is of your * aristocrates,’ she is not 
‘unsexed.’ As for me, — I am only a little trooper who 
has saved my comrade ! My soldiers, come round me one 
instant; I shall not long find words.” 


IN THE MIDST OF HER ARMY. 


619 


Her eyes closed as she spoke ; a deadly faintness and 
coldness passed over her ; and she gasped for breath. A 
moment, and the resolute courage iu her conquered : her 
eyes opened and rested on the war-worn faces of her 
“children” — rested in a long-lost look of unspeakable 
wistfulness and tenderness. 

“ I cannot speak as I would,” she said at length, while 
her voice grew very faint. “ But I have loved you. AN 
is said 1” 

All was uttered in those four brief words. “ She had 
loved them.” The whole story of her young life was told 
in the single phrase. And the gaunt, battle-scarred, 
murderous, ruthless veterans of Africa who heard her 
could have turned their weapons against their own breasts, 
and sheathed them there, rather than have looked on to 
see their darling die. 

“I have been too quick in anger sometimes — forgive 
it,” she said gently. “And do not light and curse among 
yourselves; it is bad amid brethren. Bury ray Cross with 
me, if they will let you; and let the colors be over ray 
grave, if you can. Think of me when you go into battle ; 
and tell them in France — ” 

For the first time her own eyes filled with great tears as 
the name of her beloved land paused upon her lips; she 
stretched her arms out with a gesture of infinite longing, 
like a lost child that vainly seeks its mother. 

“ If I could only see France once more! France 

It was the last word upon her utterance ; her eye3 met 
Cecil’s in one fleeting upward glance of unutterable ten- 
derness, then with her hands still stretched out westward 
to where her country was, and with the dauntless heroism 
of her smile upon her face like light, she gave a tired sigh 
as of a child that sinks to sleep, and in the midst of her 
.Army of Africa the Little One lay dead. 

****** 

In the shadow of his tent, at midnight, he whom she 
had rescued stood looking down at a bowed, stricken form 
before him with an exceeding yearning pity in his gaze. 

The words had at length been spoken that had lifted 
from him the burden of another’s guilt; the hour at last 
had come in which his eyes had met the eyes of his friend, 

55 


650 


UNDER TWO FLAQS. 


without a hidden thought between them. The sacrifice 
was ended, the martyrdom was over ; henceforth this doom 
of exile and of wretchedness would be but as a hideous 
dream ; henceforth his name would be stainless among 
men, and the desire of his heart would be given him. And 
in this hour of release the strongest feeling in him wa3 
the sadness of an infinite compassion ; and where his 
brother was stretched prostrate in shame before him, Cecil 
stooped and raised him tenderly. 

“Say no more,” he murmured. “It has been well for 
me that I have suffered these things. For yourself — if you 
do indeed repent, and feel that you owe me any debt, atone 
for it, and pay it, by letting your own life be strong in 
truth and fair in honor.” 

And it seemed to him that he himself had done no great 
or righteous thing in that servitude for another’s sake, 
whose yoke was now lifted off him for evermore ; but, look- 
ing out over the sleepless camp where one young child 
alone lay in a slumber that never would be broken, his 
heart ached with the sense of some great priceless gift re- 
ceived, and undeserved, and cast aside ; even while in the 
dreams of passion that now knew its fruition possible, and 
the sweetness of communion with the friend whose faith 
had never forsaken him, he retraced the years of his exile, 
and thanked God that it was thus with him at the end. 


AT REST. 


651 


CHAPTER THE LAST. 

AT REST. 

Under the green spring-tide leafage of English wood- 
lands, made musical with the movement and the song of 
innumerable birds that had their nests among the hawthorn 
boughs and deep cool foliage of elm and beech, an old 
horse stood at pasture. Sleeping — with the sun on his 
gray silken skin, and the flics driven off with a dreamy 
switch of his tail, and the grasses odorous about his hoofs, 
with dog-violets, and cowslips, and wild thyme — sleeping, 
yet not so surely but at one voice he started, and raised 
his head with all the eager grace of his youth, and gave a 
murmuring noise of welcome and delight. He had known 
that voice in an instant, though for so many years his ear 
had never thrilled to it: Forest King had never forgotten. 
Now, scarce a day passed but what it spoke to him some 
word of greeting or of affection, and his black soft eyes 
would gleam with their old fire, because its tone brought 
back a thousand memories of bygone victory — only memo- 
ries now, when Forest King, in the years of age, dreamed 
out his happy life under the fragrant shade of the forest 
wealth of lloyallieu. 

With his arm over the horsed neck, the exile, who had 
returned to his birthright, stood silent awhile, gazing out 
over the land on which his eyes never wearied of resting ; 
the glad, cool, green, dew- freshened earth that was so 
sweet and full of peace, after the scorched and blood-stained 
plains, whose sun was as flame, and whose breath was as 
pestilence. Then his glance came back and dwelt upon 
the face beside him, the proud and splendid woman’s face 
that had learned its softness and its passion from him alone. 

“It was worth banishment to return,” he murmured to 
her. “ It was worth the trials that I bore to learn the 
love that I have known ” 

She, looking upward at him with those deep, lustrous, 


652 


UNDER TWO FLAGS. 


imperial eyes that had first met his own in the glare of 
the African noon, passed her hand over his lips with a 
gesture of tenderness far more eloquent from her than from 
women less proud and less prone to weakness. 

“Ah, hush 1 when I think of what her love was, how 
worthless looks my own ! how little worthy of the fate it 
finds 1 What have I done that every joy should become 
mine, when she ” 

Iler mouth trembled, and the phrase died unfinished ; 
strong as her own love had grown, it looked to her un- 
proven and without desert, beside that which had chosen 
to perish for his sake. And where they stood with the 
future as fair before them as the light of the day around 
them, he bowed his head as before some sacred thing at 
the whisper of the child who had died for him. The memo- 
ries of both went back to a place in a desert land where 
the folds of the tricolor drooped over one little grave 
turned westward toward the shores of France — a grave, 
made where the beat of drum, and the sound of moving 
squadrons, and the ring of the trumpet-call, and the noise 
of the assembling battalions could be heard by night and 
day ; a grave, where the troops as they passed it by, 
saluted and lowered their arms in tender reverence, in 
faithful unasked homage, because, beneath the Flag they 
honored, there was carved in the white stone one name 
that spoke to every heart within the army she had loved, 
one name on which the Arab sun streamed as with a 
martyr’s glory: 

“CIGARETTE, 

“ ENFANT DE L’ARMEE, SOLD AT DE LA FRANCE.” 


THE END. 


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